Independent Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday accused his Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rival, Sean Lien (連勝文), of creating Taiwan’s version of “Watergate” after a magazine published transcripts of voice recordings of one of his private staff meetings.
“What has happened is very close to the Watergate scandal. No one should try to scare my colleagues at the National Taiwan University Hospital through eavesdropping,” Ko said. “The rival camp should stop this kind of dirty campaigning.”
He said he is the one running for mayor, “so please stop insulting my former colleagues at the hospital, because they are all professional and hard-working people. They don’t deserve to be harmed like this.”
Photo: CNA
However, Ko said that he would not speculate whether it was someone on Lien’s campaign team who leaked the recordings, adding that he would help his hospital colleagues to take legal action.
Ko made the remarks when asked to comment on the transcript published in yesterday’s edition of the Chinese-language Next Magazine.
According to the magazine, Ko’s campaign staff had a meeting with key members of his surgical intensive care unit team, Tsai Pi-ju (蔡璧如) and Liu Yi-ju (劉意如), prior to a press conference last week during which he released his personal bank statements and two hospital bank accounts connected to him. During the meeting, they discussed how to respond to possible questions from the media or from prosecutors if the judiciary decides to launch a probe into corruption allegations made by KMT Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾).
The magazine report also quoted Tsai as saying in the meeting that Ko had said he would “kill Wu Yi-hui [吳毅輝]” — referring to a former member of his surgical intensive care unit team now working as a member of Lien’s campaign.
Lien did not comment on Ko’s remarks, except to say that he felt horrified to learn that Ko said he would kill Wu.
“We’re running for mayor of Taipei, not to be Islamist bombers. I hope this will not happen again,” Lien said. “Ko should reflect whether he has violated the laws and regulations of the country or of a public institution, instead of venting his anger on an innocent person — it’s horrifying that he [Wu] should be killed just because he’s my friend.”
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS