KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) yesterday denied that he has been upstaged by his PFP counterpart James Soong (宋楚瑜) in their alliance for next March's presidential race.
Representing the pan-blue camp, Lien and Soong in April announced that they would run on a joint ticket against President Chen Shui-bian (
However, given Soong's recent high media exposure and high-voltage rhetoric, political observers have painted Soong as the one playing the dominant role in the KMT-PFP decision-making process.
Dismissing outsiders' claims that the KMT is losing ground to Soong, Lien, in an interview with a local TV station yesterday afternoon, said that Soong is not using him as a mere figurehead in their battle for the Presidential Office.
Claiming that he placed a high degree of trust in Soong, Lien said that the PFP leader was perceived to be upstaging him because the KMT chairman is simply doing what being a national leader should do -- delegate.
"Being a national leader, one should know how to hand down authority and practice division of labor. And that's what I am doing," Lien said.
Lien also took the opportunity to dismiss local Chinese-language media reports that said his wife Lien Fang-yu (連方瑀) is upset at independent Legislator Sisy Chen (陳文茜) for not letting her sing on stage when the KMT and the PFP co-hosted a two-hour fund-raising event earlier last month.
Sisy Chen helped organize the fund-raising event.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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