People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) yesterday criticized PFP members who have recently said they want to leave the party for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), saying that such remarks are inappropriate and that they shouldn't describe the PFP as such an unbearable party.
The criticism came after several PFP members said Tuesday that if the PFP wants to merge with its "pan-blue" ally the KMT, it should do so as soon as possible.
Soong made the remarks prior to his departure for Malaysia to attend a "Global Peace Forum" being held by former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. He said that the nature of the PFP is quite different from that of the KMT, and that the PFP is a party that has its own ideas and an insistence on rationality.
Soong advised those PFP members who made the "senseless remarks" on Tuesday that they should think of the Taiwanese people and work to create a better future for them.
In response, PFP caucus whip Sun Ta-chian (孫大千) yesterday said he feels sorry about the misunderstanding caused by the remark he made and will explain himself to Soong as soon as Soong returns from the overseas trip.
Sun said that remarks in which he likened the party to a piece of "used toilet paper" were a response to a media inquiry.
"I feel deeply sorry for not explaining the matter to the chairman sooner, and I'm sorry to see him still upset about it before his departure," he said.
Sun said that his remark was based on the theory that a party will be doing an effective job once it accomplishes its historic duty.
Sun said he agrees that party members should not engage in vitriolic bickering over the merger plan, and that the focus should be on how to achieve the goal of a KMT-PFP merger, and not on how many PFP members want to joint the KMT.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift