The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Standing Committee has decided to push back this year’s elections for chairperson and party delegates, KMT Culture and Communications Committee director-general Alicia Wang (王育敏) said yesterday.
According to election procedures passed by the committee on May 5, the elections for KMT chairperson and delegates to the party’s 21st National Congress are to be held on July 24.
Under the previously approved date, people seeking to run in the elections would have to register their candidacies on June 7 or June 8.
Photo: CNA
Committee members agreed at yesterday’s weekly meeting to postpone the elections in light of the COVID-19 situation, Wang told reporters in a virtual briefing after the meeting.
They also agreed that they would discuss the timeline of the elections at the first committee meeting to take place after the Central Epidemic Command Center lowers the COVID-19 alert to level 2, she said.
A nationwide level 3 COVID-19 alert is in effect until June 14.
The committee did not discuss whether KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang’s (江啟臣) term — which is set to end on Aug. 20 — would be extended or whether a committee member would take his place as acting chairperson should the election be delayed past that date, Wang said.
She reiterated that the committee would wait until after the COVID-19 alert has been lowered to level 2 to discuss details about the elections.
At the beginning of yesterday’s virtual committee meeting, Chiang said he agreed with proposals raised by committee members to delay the elections.
Chiang said he looks forward to the elections taking place after the COVID-19 situation stabilizes.
The domestic COVID-19 situation has become more severe than expected and its impact on people’s lives continues to grow, he said.
While the public has over the past year worked hard to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the government does not seem to have been as well-prepared, Chiang added.
Chiang won the party’s chairperson by-election on March 7 last year and was sworn in two days later.
The by-election was held to fill the vacancy left by former KMT chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), who stepped down after the party’s defeat in the presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 11 last year.
Chiang on Feb. 20 announced that he would seek re-election as KMT chairman.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
RSS