Former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) yesterday announced his bid for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairperson, a position he held from 2015 to 2016.
Chu made the announcement via a post on Facebook under the title “Change brings hope, regaining leadership brings about change.”
“Given the plight facing the KMT, as a member of the party, I feel duty-bound [to help] and officially announce that I will join the race for KMT chairperson,” he wrote.
Photo: Cheng Ming-hsiang, Taipei Times
If elected, Chu promised to form a work panel to prepare for next year’s local elections and to select the strongest candidate to represent the party in the 2024 presidential race to help the KMT return to power.
“In face of the Democratic Progressive Party’s chaotic governance,” he said he would integrate and present the achievements of the 14 local governments ruled by the KMT to demonstrate the party’s governing capacity.
Chu is expected to pose the greatest challenge to KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang’s (江啟臣) re-election bid.
The KMT chairperson election was originally scheduled for July 24, but was postponed to Sept. 25 due to a local COVID-19 outbreak. Aside from Chiang and Chu, three other KMT members have expressed their intention to join the race — Chang Ya-chung (張亞中), president of the non-governmental organization the Sun Yat-sen School; Wei Po-tao (韋伯韜), former head of the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics; and former Changhua County commissioner Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源).
Local media reports said former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) and Sean Lien (連勝文), son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), are also interested in running for KMT chairperson.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened 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), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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