The by-election to fill the seat formerly occupied by Taipei mayor-elect Chiang Wan-an has taken on an unusual significance with regard to some of the proposals made to date by candidates. For the by-election, the DPP is running Enoch Wu against Wang Hung-wei of the KMT...
President Tsai Ing-wen today announced the extension of the military draft to one year from the current four months at a press conference that began at 3:30 PM. This took place after a meeting between Tsai, the National Security Council, Vice President William Lai, Premier Su Tseng-chang, Minister of Defense Chiu Kuo-cheng, and members of the DPP legislative caucus earlier this month. The announcement was expected in advance, with details of the plan reported on earlier this afternoon...
FoxConn founder Terry Gou has recently begun publicly criticizing the Central Epidemic Command Center that coordinates Taiwan’s COVID-19 strategy over its apparent failure to purchase BioNTech vaccines. Instead, Taiwan is primarily depending on the next-generation Moderna bivalent vaccines for its next round of vaccinating the population against COVID-19...
Gang-related ties and past criminal charges did not prove to be an obstacle for pan-Blue candidates winning office in the last set of elections. Namely, criminal wrongdoing by pan-Blue politicians–whether that be with regards to corruption or even gang-related murder and assault did not prove an obstacle to such politicians winning office...
Questions have been raised about whether pan-Blue independent Chung Tung-chin, who is the current Miaoli county magistrate-elect, may be removed from office and the results of the election invalidated. Namely, three individuals have been detained by prosecutors in connection with a vote-buying scheme to aid Chung, who won with 42.66% of the vote. Prosecutors are also moving to invalidate the vote. ...
The DPP suffered a loss in the Chiayi mayoral election over the weekend. This adds another defeat to the losses suffered by the DPP in nine-in-one elections...
Pan-green legislators from the DPP and NPP held a press conference last weekend to call attention to the issue of unregulated organ harvesting and trafficking from China. The legislators called for the enactment of a law targeting organ harvesting and trafficking, in particular, targeting live organ harvesting. The law would mostly aim to target China and Cambodia. The press conference took place on December 10th, also known as International Human Rights Day...
The offices of TPP legislator Ann Kao, who is the mayor-elect of Hsinchu, were searched by prosecutors yesterday. Kao and other witnesses were also questioned by prosecutors...
The Taiwanese government plans to ban TikTok/Douyin in the public sector, mandating that public sector workers cannot use the app, with rising concerns about the security threat posed by the Chinese app. It is more of a question as to whether there will be an outright ban on TikTok/Douyin for the general public, with pan-Green legislators calling for strong regulation, but this raises questions about the measures that the government can take against Chinese apps. TikTok/Douyin is likely to prove a litmus test, setting a benchmark for measures taken by the government regarding Chinese apps as a whole...
The Constitutional Court heard arguments on divorce in mid-November, with regard to current conditions that allow divorces to take place. The hearing was held on November 15th, ending around 12 PM, though the issue has not received significant public exposure. This may be due to being overshadowed by the previous election cycle...
