Former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Shih Ming-teh (
Shih made the remarks at a press conference in Taipei, where he displayed photos he had taken with Chen Yu-hao during a visit to Thailand last year.
He said that "Chen [Yu-hao] and I are definitely good friends."
PHOTO: HSIEH YIN-CHUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Chen Yu-hao, former chairman of the Tuntex Group who fled to the US, is listed as one of the country's 10 most-wanted fugitives.
Shih has launched a campaign inviting a million people to join him in a sit-in to pressure Chen Shui-bian to step down.
DPP legislators have said that his campaign to oust the president was linked to the fugitive tycoon, who during the 2004 presidential election had accused Chen Shui-bian of accepting millions of dollars in illegal political donations.
Shih yesterday also said he was under surveillance.
"I am just a civilian. My conduct has nothing to do with government business. Why am I being followed and bugged?" he asked.
DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun, in Ilan yesterday, said that the party would "absolutely not cover up" irregularities by the president if he had committed any.
Shih's campaign to oust Chen Shui-bian was "wrong," Yu said.
Yu said he believed the president was not involved in any wrongdoing in relation to corruption allegations involving his family members and close aides.
If the president had really made an error, the public could press him to step down through constitutional procedures, such as a recall or impeachment motions, Yu said.
Yu said the nation's laws stipulate that the president will be removed from office if he is impeached, if a presidential recall proposal is passed in a public referendum, or if he is convicted of sedition or treason.
However, so far the president had not been proven to have committed any crimes, Yu said, and he called on the public not to resort to measures that fall outside the constitutional system.
Yu said that while he respected the protesters' freedom to express their opinions, attempting to oust the president through demonstrations would only jeopardize political stability and disrupt the lives of local residents.
He said such tactics would create a vicious cycle that encouraged people to resort to these methods to topple those in power in future.
Separately, Vice President Annette Lu (
She urged the public to take a rational attitude toward dealing with the nation's challenges.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (
In related news, members of the Democratic Action League and the president's supporters got into a shouting match and scuffled with police who tried to separate them when both parties turned up at a temple in Chiayi County.
The Democratic Action League has obtained a permit to use Ketagelan Boulevard from Sept. 9 to Sept. 10 for its campaign urging the president to step down.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
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