Three-term Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) yesterday said he would not seek re-election, citing the results of the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 29 last year in Keelung.
“Since the KMT lost last year’s mayoral campaign, as someone who took on a heavy role in campaigning, I should not only humbly listen to the choice of city residents, but should also take appropriate responsibility and make good my promise,” Hsieh wrote in a Facebook post, referring to his promise not to seek re-election if KMT mayoral candidate Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) lost.
Hsieh Kuo-liang said he would continue to help the KMT’s Keelung branch as a volunteer, leaving open the possibility for a campaign role in the next legislative election in January next year.
Photo: Yu Chao-fu, Taipei Times
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) beat Hsieh Li-kung in the city, which had long been viewed as a KMT stronghold.
However, a corruption scandal that led to a split in the KMT camp, former Keelung city council speaker Huang Ching-tai (黃景泰) ran as an independent candidate after he was detained on suspicion of violating the Anti-Corruption Act (貪污治罪條例).
Lin won the mayor’s race with an increase of 10 percentage points over his previous campaign in 2012, when he ran against Hsieh Kuo-liang for Keelung’s single legislative seat.
Hsieh Kuo-liang’s announcement signals the end to a 10-year legislative career that saw him serve as the KMT caucus whip as well as cochairman of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee.
Hsieh, who holds a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and renounced his US citizenship to serve as a legislator, is the scion of a prominent Keelung political family.
The family also owns a number of businesses and schools such as the Sangong Group, the Second Credit Cooperative of Keelung and the Keelung Er Xin High School.
When he was first elected in 2004 on the People’s First Party’s (PFP) ticket, he became the youngest member of the legislature. He switched allegiance to the KMT in 2006.
DPP Keelung branch chairman Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) yesterday said that he will campaign for the party’s nomination for the seat. Lawyer Cheng Wen-ting (鄭文婷) announced her own candidacy for the nomination earlier this month.
Rumored pan-blue candidates include Hsieh Li-kung, KMT Legislator Hsu Shao-ping’s (徐少萍) son, Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥), and KMT Keelung City Councilor Han Liang-chi (韓良圻), as well as Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄) of the PFP, who represented the city in the Legislative Yuan for three consecutive terms.
Additional reporting by Yu Chao-fu
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS