The campaign office of beaten Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) began packing up yesterday, but neither Lien nor his campaign manager, KMT Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元), have been seen since Lien’s concession speech on Saturday.
Independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) won the race with 57.16 percent of the votes, topping Lien, who garnered 40.82 percent of ballots.
While most pundits thought Tsai originated several negative campaign tactics that are thought to have been a top factor in Lien’s loss, a Lien campaign official yesterday said that the strategy originated with Lien’s father, former vice president and former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰).
The official, who wished to remain anonymous, said that surveys conducted for internal use only suggested that Sean Lien would lose to Ko by just 10 percent.
“We expected we would lose the election; we just did not expect to lose by this wide a margin,” the official said.
As for the negative strategy, the official said that Tsai was asked to manage the campaign because of his hawkish reputation. However, Tsai did not have the weight to affect overall campaign strategy, the official added.
For example, KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) — after finding a particular smear had little effect — tried to stifle allegations that Ko laundered money through a National Taiwan University Hospital account, the official said, adding that Lien Chan had pulled her aside for a talk, after which the allegations continued.
The official said the campaign office later realized the harm that the negative campaigning caused and asked the former head of its promotional division, You Tzu-hsiang (游梓翔) — who was against the tactics — to return in hopes of limiting the fallout.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
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