Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), the son of former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice chairman John Chiang (蔣孝嚴) and a fourth-generation descendant of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), on Sunday announced that he would run in the KMT’s legislative primary in Taipei’s Zhongshan (中山) and Songshan (松山) districts, pitting himself against incumbent KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) and KMT Taipei City Councilor Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇).
Chiang Wan-an’s bid for the candidacy has been described by pundits as an attempt to avenge his father’s defeat at the hands of Lo in a 2011 KMT legislative primary.
Chiang Wan-an, 37, rejected the accusation, saying that there was no animosity between his family and Lo.
Photo: Tsai Ya-hua, Taipei Times
The nation has changed since the Sunflower movement and the nine-in-one elections last year, and young people need to step forward and bolster the KMT after the party suffered its greatest defeat in last year’s elections, Chiang Wan-an said.
Chiang Wan-an, who holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, has been working as a lawyer in the US and is a partner in a Taiwanese law firm. He said that he does not have dual citizenship when reporters asked him about his nationality.
Meanwhile, the KMT’s Taipei branch said competition for the party’s legislative candidacy in Neihu (內湖) and Nangang (南港) districts is heated, with eight aspirants joining the primary after incumbent KMT Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) announced that he would not seek re-election.
Among the eight aspirants are former KMT legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) and former Mainland Affairs Council deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀).
The party’s regulations state that where there is only one registered candidate in a constituency, the candidate would be automatically nominated for the next year’s legislative elections, but if more than two contenders vie with an incumbent lawmaker for the party’s nomination, the incumbent has to pass an assessment, win a poll by a 5 percent margin and be approved by a nomination panel to secure the candidacy.
The nomination mechanism has been criticized by KMT Taipei City Councilor Lee Ching-yuan (李慶元) as lacking transparency, saying that the party is biased toward incumbents, and that it has not yet expounded on the methodology used in the assessment and poll.
“Should not incumbent legislators be held accountable [for the KMT’s rout in last year’s nine-in-one elections]? Will the public be satisfied when it sees the same old faces running the legislature again?” Lee said.
Lee said he declined to sign up for the primary as a protest against the party’s policy.
The list of members wishing to take part in the primaries was submitted to KMT headquarters yesterday, the Taipei branch said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
‘MALIGN PURPOSE’: Governments around the world conduct espionage operations, but China’s is different, as its ultimate goal is annexation, a think tank head said Taiwan is facing a growing existential threat from its own people spying for China, experts said, as the government seeks to toughen measures to stop Beijing’s infiltration efforts and deter Taiwanese turncoats. While Beijing and Taipei have been spying on each other for years, experts said that espionage posed a bigger threat to Taiwan due to the risk of a Chinese attack. Taiwan’s intelligence agency said China used “diverse channels and tactics” to infiltrate the nation’s military, government agencies and pro-China organizations. The main targets were retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal
RSS