Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), whose presidential nomination was rescinded by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Saturday, yesterday hired an attorney to sue online news outlet Storm Media for defamation over a report alleging that she had called for the extraordinary party congress at which she was replaced.
Storm Media on Thursday reported that former minister of transportation and communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) — an adviser to Hung’s campaign team — had been among the first group of people to be summoned by the Special Investigation Division (SID) on Wednesday over its probe of Hung’s ouster.
Yeh was the go-between between party headquarters — under the leadership of KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) — and the Hung camp, and conveyed messages and brokered meetings between the two sides, the report said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The report said that an Oct. 6 meeting between Chu and Hung — seen as the “final showdown” between the two — was brokered by Yeh.
At the meeting, Chu is said to have asked Hung to withdraw her presidential bid under her own initiative.
Hung reportedly refused to give up the campaign, saying she had been elected by the party’s due processes and was therefore the legitimate candidate.
“Hung insisted that it if she was to be replaced, it had to be done via the party’s mechanism, which mandated the calling of an extraordinary party congress, otherwise she feared she would be beset by legal problems,” the report said.
The piece also claimed that Hung had told her friends in tears that “the game is over” when she saw on Oct. 6 that even the Huang Fu-hsing (黃復興) faction — the special military veteran branch of the KMT s — had sent out messages to their members calling on them to support Chu.
Hung’s office issued a news release on Thursday night rebutting the report, saying that Hung had from the beginning refused to accept any suggestion that would violate ethics and procedural justice.
“Hung was not able to prevent the calling of the congress nor the decision to replace her; distorting the facts and saying there was a ‘tacit agreement’ or that it was Hung who wanted the congress is intolerable,” the statement said.
The office accused Storm Media of “seriously damaging Hung’s political honesty and personal integrity, qualities that she values immensely.”
Rainfall is expected to become more widespread and persistent across central and southern Taiwan over the next few days, with the effects of the weather patterns becoming most prominent between last night and tomorrow, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Independent meteorologist Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said that based on the latest forecast models of the combination of a low-pressure system and southwesterly winds, rainfall and flooding are expected to continue in central and southern Taiwan from today to Sunday. The CWA also warned of flash floods, thunder and lightning, and strong gusts in these areas, as well as landslides and fallen
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
SOUTH CHINA SEA? The Philippine president spoke of adding more classrooms and power plants, while skipping tensions with China over disputed areas Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday blasted “useless and crumbling” flood control projects in a state of the nation address that focused on domestic issues after a months-long feud with his vice president. Addressing a joint session of congress after days of rain that left at least 31 dead, Marcos repeated his recent warning that the nation faced a climate change-driven “new normal,” while pledging to investigate publicly funded projects that had failed. “Let’s not pretend, the people know that these projects can breed corruption. Kickbacks ... for the boys,” he said, citing houses that were “swept away” by the floods. “Someone has
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole