A dispute regarding COVID-19 testing recently broke out between the Changhua county government, and the Centers for Disease Control, the national body under the Ministry of Health and Welfare that coordinates Taiwan’s fight against COVID-19...
Plans for Taiwan to set up a representative office in Somaliland and, in turn, for Somaliland to set up a representative office in Taiwan have continued apace, despite pressure from China and Somalia. Taiwan’s representative office in Somaliland opened earlier this week, while Somaliland’s first representative to Taiwan, Mohamed Omar Hagi Mohamoud, arrived earlier this month...
It took few by surprise that Chen Chi-mai of the DPP was the winner of the Kaohsiung mayoral by-election today. Chen won by large margins, winning 70% of the vote, and defeating KMT candidate Jane Lee and TPP candidate Wu Yi-jheng. The by-election was the first by-election to replace a mayor who had been recalled from office in Taiwanese history...
Comments by Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je at the TPP's first national congress last week are telling about the current political orientation of the party, as well as the challenges it faces going forward. Ko raised eyebrows by calling for a ‘Silent Revolution” in Taiwanese politics at the party congress, a pointed criticism of the Tsai administration indicative of the party’s pan-Blue leanings. At the same time, Ko did not lean as heavily into pan-Blue rhetoric as much as he did during the TPP’s founding one year ago...
More troubles are ahead for the NPP, with the departure of the party’s two Taipei city councilors in the wake of corruption allegations against former party chair and legislator Hsu Yung-ming that emerged earlier this month...
Student demonstrators held a press conference outside of the Ministry of Education today, criticizing the announcement by the ministry yesterday that, while students from foreign countries enrolled in degree programs will be allowed to return to Taiwan, Chinese students will be excluded...
An ongoing corruption probe into a group of pan-Green and pan-Blue politicians accused of taking bribes in a case related to the ownership of the Pacific SOGO department store chain has the potential to be a major corruption scandal faced by the DPP under the Tsai administration...
Taiwan marked one hundred days since the last case of domestic transmission of COVID-19 on July 17th, with the last case of local COVID-19 transmission having taken place on April 8th. It appears as though the COVID-19 situation is still under control in Taiwan, Taiwan having managed to avoid the expansive lockdowns that the rest of the world has seen. However, with the second and third waves of COVID-19 taking place globally and five new imported cases added today, Taiwan is likely to see an uptick in imported cases going forward...
President Tsai Ing-wen signaled a renewed focus on constitutional reform for her second term earlier this week in public comments at the DPP’s national congress. Tsai gave these comments in her capacity as chair of the DPP. Likewise, Tsai emphasized that the next major electoral task ahead of the DPP was winning the Kaohsiung by-election, which she phrased as “restoring the glory of Kaohsiung”...
