The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) needs to hold a fair, open and “paradigm-setting” presidential primary to regain the public’s trust, former premier and presidential hopeful William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday.
Lai made the remarks at a book launch in Taipei for his memoir Hope Through Action: The William Lai Style of Leadership (用行動帶來希望：賴清德的決策風格), which covers his second term as Tainan mayor and his term as premier.
Lai and President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) last week separately registered for the party’s presidential primary.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Until Lai’s announcement on Monday last week that he would run, which caught many party members off-guard, only Tsai had announced a bid for the party’s nomination.
DPP officials should not be pressured to take sides, the party organization should not mobilize to support one candidate over another, and factions should stay out of the contest, Lai said yesterday.
“The primary is a platform for candidates to talk about their ideals; only by holding a paradigm-setting primary will the DPP gain public support,” he said. “I would rather lose the primary than cause harm to President Tsai Ing-wen.”
Talking about the book, Lai said that he had asked Tsai for her position on several key issues before he agreed to become premier.
According to the book, Lai told Tsai that amendments to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) were severely flawed and requested Tsai’s support for amending the law a second time, which he obtained.
The subject of granting a presidential pardon to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was also brought up and Tsai said that she would work toward that goal.
Tsai also promised Lai that he would be able to maintain his pro-independence stance as the premier and that she was committed to pushing constitutional reforms through the Legislative Yuan, he wrote.
“These accounts … attempt to provide a historical record of our achievements and failures, the responsibilities of which must be shared collectively,” Lai said. “There was never any attempt on my part to harm the presidency or to oust Tsai. I will not respond to comments released to the media by a so-called high-ranking DPP official.”
The book was not written to boost his presidential campaign, he said, adding that work on the manuscript began in the third year of his second term as Tainan mayor.
After the DPP’s loses in the nine-in-one elections in November last year, Lai resigned as premier and then added the 500 days of his term as premier to the manuscript, he said.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS