Two defeated candidates in Saturday’s Taipei mayoral election yesterday began separate thank-you tours, saying they would take some time to think about what their next steps would be.
Taipei mayor-elect Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) received about 42.29 percent of the votes, winning in 11 of the city’s 12 districts, while Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) garnered 31.93 percent of the votes and independent candidate Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) received 25.14 percent.
Chen, along with his election campaign convener, former vice president Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), yesterday morning rode through the city on the back of a pickup truck to thank those who had voted for him.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Asked about the reason for his defeat — which one member of his team in a political talk show had attributed to a member of his decisionmaking team being a “gangster” — Chen said only he is to blame.
“I was the chief player in this election campaign, so I will be fully responsible for what I did, and I will not blame anyone,” he said before starting his tour.
Chen said that many people came to help him with good intentions, and that he welcomed any support by legal means.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Asked about what he would do next, Chen said he would “take a break and think for a while.”
Also from the back of a pickup truck, Huang thanked those who voted for her.
Asked about her feelings after the election, Huang said that she believes everything in life is a task.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
She had done her best, she added.
Despite her defeat, the election result showed that Taipei residents are willing to vote for a candidate who is neither from the pan-blue nor the pan-green camp, she said.
Asked if she would run for a legislative seat, Huang laughed and said that everyone seems to be eager to find a new job for her, but she will take some time to think about her next step.
The Central Election Commission has announced that a legislative by-election would be held in Taipei on Jan. 8 next year to fill the seat vacated by Chiang, who stepped down as legislator during his mayoral campaign.
Outgoing Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said he had congratulated Chiang and asked him to select a project manager for the handover.
Ko also lauded Huang’s strong showing in the election.
Huang, who the TPP endorsed ahead of the mayoral election, has abundant political experience and dedication to serve the public, Ko said.
Garnering more than 342,000 votes as an independent candidate is not easy in Taipei, Ko said, adding that it shows there is a “third political force” in the capital.
However, he said that her defeat also meant that not enough people wanted continuity in Taipei City Hall, referring to Huang being a former deputy mayor in his administration.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS