Taiwan is closely monitoring the political situation in former ally El Salvador following a general election, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said on Friday, after an aide to Salvadorean president-elect Nayib Bukele on Thursday said that the new leader would assess whether to maintain ties with Beijing instead of Taipei.
Bukele, a former mayor of the country’s capital, San Salvador, won the presidential election on Sunday last week by a landslide, garnering more than 50 percent of the vote and ending 25 years of two-party dominance in the Central American nation.
During the campaign, Bukele was critical of the benefits El Salvador received after establishing diplomatic relations with China.
Photo: AFP
The outgoing leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front in August last year cut ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing, ending 85 years of diplomatic ties.
Federico Anliker, secretary-general of Bukele’s New Ideas party, said that the incoming administration would investigate why the outgoing government forged ties with China, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“With the issue of China, China-Taiwan relations, we have to study them and put them in the balance — what is best for the nation, not what is best for a political party, as the [outgoing administration] did,” the report quoted Anliker as saying.
“We were not consulted, nor did they give us the reasons [for establishing] relations with China. Now we have to investigate in detail,” he said.
Ministry spokesman Andrew Lee (李憲章) said that the ministry is aware of the comments made by the Bukele camp.
“We will continue to closely monitor the post-election political situation in El Salvador,” he said, without elaborating.
Taiwan decided to cut ties with El Salvador after the Central American nation’s request for an “astronomical sum” of financial aid was rejected, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Aug. 21 last year.
He did not disclose the amount.
El Salvador is the fifth diplomatic ally to switch recognition from Taipei to Beijing since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in May 2016, often following promises of financial assistance or loans from Beijing.
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS