Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Cheng submitted her resignation to Ma on Wednesday night amid criticism from the pan-green camp that Ma had turned a blind eye while Cheng was living in a rent-free apartment provided by business tycoon Chou Hsin-yi (
Ma said that although he had not been notified of Cheng's decision on Wednesday night, he did accept her letter of resignation.
"I will ask her to stay. I want her to stay, because there's no reason for her to quit the job now," he said before presiding over a municipal meeting at Taipei City Hall.
Cheng has denied ever doing Chou any favors in return for his patronage after the Chinese-language Next magazine exposed the issue and questioned her integrity.
The KMT's Evaluation and Discipline Committee had suggested that Cheng move out of the apartment, even thought it ruled that there was nothing wrong with her living there. Cheng promised to find new accommodation within a month and took a few days' leave last week in order to move out.
Ma said yesterday that Cheng has already moved into a new place, and that there was consequently no reason for her to leave the KMT, as the party needed her help to promote membership diversity.
Cheng was not available for comment last night, and her cellphone remained turned off until press time.
KMT Deputy Spokesman Huang Yu-cheng (
In her resignation statement to Ma, Cheng said: "As the KMT spokeswoman, I allowed myself to fall into the dirty game between ruling and opposition parties ... But I should've demanded higher standards of myself."
"In democratic politics, no one is irreplaceable. I am nothing but a small part. ... I still believe that Chairman Ma's resolve to reform the party is 100 percent. We are serious," she said.
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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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching