KMT top dogs were quiet yesterday on whether to expel former chairman Lee Teng-hui (
"Clear the party of the cancerous tumor to promise the KMT a prosperous future," diehard pro-unification KMT members shouted outside where the party's 16th national congress was meeting yesterday.
But most of the party's core members and representatives attending the party congress yesterday said they either opposed ousting Lee or had nothing to say on the matter.
Some members fear that expelling Lee would simply make him more popular among the rank and file and anger Lee's supporters within the party.
Lin Fong-cheng (
"Unity is currently the primary pursuit of the congress and the party," said Hsu Li-teh (
"I don't consider Lee's expulsion compatible with such a pursuit."
Vincent Siew (
Taipei Mayor and central standing committee member Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) shared Siew's view, and tried to shrug off the dispute.
Ma said the congress welcomes all discussion on any matter, and that there was no need to overreact to any issue.
"There is still room to discuss whether to expel Lee," the mayor said.
Pro-Lee legislator Hong Hsing-jung (
Hong also had harsh words for Liang Su-yung (
"Pro-unification votes have been taken by the PFP and the New Party," Hong said. "Liang simply cannot understand how fierce the grassroots [pro-Taiwan] campaign is."
Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), chairman of the China Development Industrial Bank and a Central Standing Committee member known for his close ties to Lee, came to the former president's defense yesterday.
"It's very impolite to discuss whether to expel Lee, as he has made great contributions to the party and the country," Liu said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has