Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
"I'm not angry with him nor have I ever asked him to apologize," Wang said. "He said he has offered apologies five, six, seven times, but I don't know who he apologized to. He didn't apologize to me ... Sincerity is very important."
Wang said he wants Ma to offer an explanation for comments he made during the campaign, including accusations that Wang was buying votes, conducting "black gold" politics, following the policy line of former president Lee Teng-hui (
"All I care about is the party's image and what I want is very simple," Wang said. "I don't want the public to think that the KMT is a corrupt party. Since he started the problem, he is responsible for taking care of it. It is as simple as that."
Wang also insisted on relinquishing the post of KMT vice chairman, despite Ma's efforts to convince him to stay on.
Wang said that since Ma aspires to reform the party and is encouraging senior members to give up their positions to younger members, he will respond to the call and give Ma more space to put his campaign promises into practice.
"It is meaningless for me to hold on to the post as it is time for me to pass the baton on to the younger generation," he said, adding that he will continue to perform his duty as a party member.
Wang also dismissed mounting speculation that he will lead localization-minded members of the KMT to form a so-called "Taiwan Nationalist Party."
"It is nonsense," he said. "It's a political maneuver aimed at dividing the party. I'm 100 percent loyal to the party and call on KMT supporters to believe that I would never do such a thing."
Speaking about his meeting with Ma before the party's Central Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday, Wang said that Ma had actually caught him off guard.
"He deliberately waited for me there, and because I'm such a nice person, I just did whatever he asked," Wang said.
"He wanted to talk, so we talked. He is, after all, the future chairman," Wang said.
Ma arrived early for the meeting at KMT headquarters and stood watch over the driveway, cornering Wang for the meeting when he arrived.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the