A KMT elder and former diplomat cut his wrist during a meeting yesterday to protest the party's failure to expel former party chairman Lee Teng-hui (
The drastic move by Konsin Shah (夏功權), a former representative to the US between 1979 and 1981, took place during a meeting of the KMT Central Advisory Council.
"Many members have said they would kill themselves if the opposition camp fails to retake the presidency in two and a half years," Shah, 81, told the council, composed mainly of members who fled China after the civil war. "I may not be alive by then, so I would like to set an example today."
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMESN
The octogenarian then slipped a blade out of his briefcase and slit his left wrist at the podium, saying, "Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) must unite the party and handle the proposal to expel Lee for the sake of justice."
The suicide attempt threw the assembly into disarray.
Chang Che-chen (
Shah was rushed to the nearby National Taiwan University Hospital and was in stable condition.
As before, the KMT chair declined to address the Lee issue to avoid alienating Lee supporters.
It is generally believed the DPP would not have won the presidency last year if two splinter groups, the People First Party and the New Party, had not broken away from the KMT.
In addition, some KMT mem-bers such as Shah attributed the DPP victory in part to Lee's secret backing. The alleged collusion led hundreds of grassroots members to besiege the KMT headquarters for days after the election debacle, pressing for Lee's downfall.
Shah, who received his law degree from Washington DC's Georgetown University, held several diplomatic posts, including ambassador to Uruguay and New Zealand.
Earlier, Shah and fellow member Liang Su-yung (梁肅戎) filed a joint complaint with the KMT disciplinary department, accusing Lee of betraying the party.
They cited as evidence Lee's public statements that he would stump for legislative candidates from the Taiwan Solidarity Union, formed primarily by former ranking KMT members sympathetic to the former president. Shah maintained that if Lee wasn't expelled, the KMT would collapse within two years.
Echoing Shah's apprehension, Wang Tso-yung (
Wang, who advised Lee to join the KMT, said he regrets the move as the biggest mistake he ever made in his life.
Ironically, the Central Advisory Council, created by Lee to appease the KMT old guard, has been the main venue for Lee-bashing.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS