Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday criticized President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) attempt in his Double Ten National Day address to explain how he has been “misunderstood” as an example of how the president is disconnected from the public.
Tsai received a warm welcome on arriving at a Ko (柯) and Tsai (蔡) joint family reunion in Taipei, with participants turning away from an ancestor worship ritual to shake hands and take pictures with her.
However, the atmosphere became more serious when Tsai was asked to comment on Ma’s speech on Saturday, in which he said he has done much to improve cross-strait relations and bring about positive changes to Taiwan, but is often misunderstood.
“[When] a president who has been in power for more than seven years feels that the public has a number of misunderstandings about him, spending so much time explaining during a celebration in which he participated as president for the last time, I think it shows one thing — there is a really big gap between how the president thinks and how the public thinks,” Tsai said.
In response to questions regarding if she sang the words “our party” when the national anthem was played during the Double Ten National Day celebration outside the Presidential Office Building in Taipei on Saturday, Tsai only said she took part as the chairperson of the DPP and sang the national anthem because she wanted to promote national solidarity, declining to go into a detailed discussion about what she sang.
Regarding DPP caucus whip Tsai Chi-chang’s (蔡其昌) suggestion to change the words “our party” to “our people,” Tsai said: “It is not the most important thing for us to do.”
When asked about Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), who is likely to be replaced at an upcoming KMT extraordinary national congress, Tsai said she feels that Hung has recently suffered significantly, and wished that Hung would cheer up.
At a separate event yesterday afternoon, Tsai met with a US Republic National Committee delegation headed by its chairman, Reince Priebus, at DPP headquarters.
The two sides exchanged views on Taiwan’s presidential election in January, Taiwan-US relations, economic development, youth employment and long-term care issues, officials said.
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
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One person was killed and another seven injured today when a tourist shuttle bus plunged 30m to 40m down a ravine in Nantou County, the Tourism Administration said. The bus is suspected to have suddenly accelerated out of control near the flower center of the Sun-Link-Sea Forest Recreation Area, a popular attraction during cherry blossom season. Of the eight onboard, a 66-year-old man was killed, four were seriously injured and three sustained minor injuries, including the driver. The Nantou County Police Department said it received a report of the incident at 12:15pm and dispatched seven teams to assist. All surviving passengers have been transferred
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