The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) wants to field DPP Legislator Liu Chao-hao (劉櫂豪) and Hung Kuo-hao (洪國浩), mayor of Nantou County’s Caotun Township (草屯), as candidates for Taitung and Nantou county commissioners respectively in next year’s local elections and hold primary elections for the races in Kaohsiung and Tainan and Yilan and Chiayi counties before next year.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), chairperson of the DPP, last week meet with Liu and Hung to persuade them to run, DPP spokesman Chang Chih-hao (張志豪) said yesterday.
While not yet finalized, “nominating the two is widely supported in the party, and the [DPP] Electoral Strategy Committee will finalize the recruitment and nomination procedure after communicating with local politicians again,” Chang said.
Taitung and Nantou are run by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and are considered difficult constituencies for the DPP.
The DPP nominated Liu to run for Taitung county commissioner in 2009 and 2014, but he lost both elections.
The DPP nominated Veterans Affairs Council Deputy Minister Lee Wen-chung (李文忠) to run for Nantou county commissioner in 2009 and 2014, but he also lost both times.
Hung is considered to be a strong candidate for Nantou County commissioner, given his current post.
At least one televised debate would be held as part of primaries in Kaohsiung, Tainan, Yilan and Chiayi — where competition for a nomination is fierce, the party said.
As many as 70 percent of potential candidates seeking the DPP’s nomination have agreed to hold the primaries by March, but a handful — likely those to lead in opinion polls — prefer an earlier timeframe, Chang said.
Some potential candidates have expressed their reservations about the proposed debate, fearing their remarks might be used against them by KMT opponents in future elections, but committee convener Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀) said that the DPP conducted a debate in 2014, so doing so again should be feasible.
The DPP also plans to nominate either former DPP legislator Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻) or Hsu Ting-chen (徐定禎), the independent mayor of Miaoli County’s Toufen City (頭份), to run for Miaoli County commissioner, Chang said.
Miaoli is a KMT stronghold, as it has won 16 of 17 commissioner elections there, with its only defeat being by former Miaoli County commissioner Fu Hsueh-peng (傅學鵬), a former KMT member turned independent.
The DPP has yet to decide on candidates for other areas, while the incumbent DPP mayors of Taoyuan, Taichung, Keelung, Hsinchu and Chiayi and the commissioners of Changhua, Yunlin, Pingtung and Penghu counties are expected to seek re-election.
Taiwanese barista Xie Yi-chen (謝溢宸) recently triumphed at the 2024 World Coffee Championships, taking home 1st place in the World Latte Art category. Xie, 28, impressed the judges in the final round with patterns of a whale, a moose, and a dragon in the three-day competition that took place in Copenhagen, Denmark from June 27-29, clinching the title of latte art world champion during his first time representing Taiwan on the world stage. At a press conference held by the Taiwan Coffee Association on Thursday, Xie said that creating latte art gives him a tremendous feeling of achievement. Speaking about his entries in
TRAVEL CONVENIENCE: The program is to shorten wait times while passing through airport checks and would start for Taiwanese from January next year Japan is to launch a new program to expedite entry procedures for Taiwanese starting from January next year. The Japanese government is planning to introduce new rules to shorten the time it takes foreign travelers to pass through immigration, thereby attracting more tourists to visit, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported yesterday. An airport preclearance program would be implemented to allow foreign travelers to finish some screenings at their departure airport’s terminals and undergo simple confirmation procedures upon arrival, it said. The program would initially be applied to travelers from Taiwan from January next year and could be extended to travelers from elsewhere depending
The annual Taipei Summer Festival, which starts today, is to tone down its fireworks displays, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said on Monday. Fireworks displays are to be held at the riverside site in Datong District’s (大同) Dadaocheng (大稻埕) area on four days at this year’s festival, with the first today, and then on Wednesday next week, July 31 and Aug. 10, the department said. There were eight displays last year, with the reduction aimed at minimizing inconvenience to local residents, it said. The first three shows, which are all on Wednesdays, are to last for five minutes, while the final
EYE ON MAYORS: The DPP would file a complaint with the Control Yuan against Ko and Chiang over their handling of reports of abuse at a preschool in the city The Taipei City Government’s belated response under Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) and his predecessor, Taiwan People’s Party Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), to alleged child sex abuse at a kindergarten resulted in more children being victimized, two Taipei City Councilors said yesterday. A Taipei preschool teacher has been charged with sexually abusing six children from 2021 to last year at a school registered to his mother. Prosecutors are reportedly considering additional charges amid a wave of new accusations allegedly linking the suspect to 20 other abused children and the discovery at his residence of more than 600 sexually explicit videos featuring minors. The