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.
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
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
STRAIT OF HORMUZ: In the case of a prolonged blockade by Iran, Taiwan would look to sources of LNG outside the Middle East, including Australia and the US Taiwan would not have to ration power due to a shortage of natural gas, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, after reports that the Strait of Hormuz was closed amid the conflict in the Middle East. The government has secured liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies for this month and contingency measures are in place if the conflict extends into next month, Kung told lawmakers. Saying that 25 percent of Taiwan’s natural gas supplies are from Qatar, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) asked about the situation in light of the conflict. There would be “no problems” with
RSS