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.
INCURSION: After 13 PLA aircraft flew into Taiwan’s ADIZ, the US Department of State said that China should rather ‘engage in meaningful dialogue’ with Taiwan US President Joe Biden’s administration on Saturday urged China to stop placing military pressure on Taiwan, while calling on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to engage in peaceful dialogue. The statement by the US Department of State was issued after 13 Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan’s southwest air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Saturday, the highest number observed in a single day this year, the Ministry of National Defense said. The air force scrambled fighter jets to monitor the Chinese aircraft, issuing radio warnings and mobilizing air defense assets until the planes left the ADIZ. The US “notes
‘INCREASED VIGILANCE’: A source of infection has not yet been found for the latest two cases in a hospital cluster, which should serve as a warning, Chen Shih-chung said A total of 2,991 people associated with a COVID-19 cluster infection at Taoyuan General Hospital have been put under home isolation, after an emergency expanded isolation order was issued on Sunday evening, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. Fifteen people have so far tested positive in the cluster infection. The first case in the cluster (case No. 838) was reported on Jan. 12 — a doctor who treated an infected patient who had returned from the US. Contact tracing for the first 13 cases found connections to case No. 838, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who
FAMILY UNIT: The CECC warned that the eldest sister of the latest case, who also has COVID-19, visited Taoyuan’s Chungping evening market on Tuesday and Wednesday The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday reported a domestic case of COVID-19, associated with a recent cluster infection at Taoyuan General Hospital, and two imported cases. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that the latest case (No. 885) is a woman in her 50s, who is the third daughter of case No. 881, a man in his 90s. The woman is the main caregiver of her elderly father, who had been hospitalized earlier this month and was treated by a nurse (case No. 852) from Monday to Thursday last week, he said, adding that
DUBIOUS HONOR? A man in his 90s, who tested positive yesterday and is part of the Taoyuan hospital cluster, is the oldest person in Taiwan to have contracted COVID-19 Taiwan yesterday recorded six new imported cases of COVID-19 and two new domestic cases, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said, adding that the local infections are linked to the cluster at Taoyuan General Hospital, which now totals 12 cases. One of the domestic cases is a man in his 90s, who was treated earlier this month at Taoyuan General Hospital and tested negative for COVID-19 on Monday last week, four days before he was discharged, the center said in a statement. After one of the nurses on the ward was confirmed on Saturday last week to have contracted COVID-19, the
RSS