The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has been acting in an outdated fashion in its handling of affairs related to its presidential nomination, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said yesterday.
Ker made the remarks when asked to comment on the meeting called by KMT former chairman Lien Chan (連戰) to coordinate presidential hopefuls former chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
"No matter how the KMT selects a pair of candidates on a presidential ticket, it will end up disdained by the people as the party has shown that it has no idea how to meet the public's expectations," Ker said.
After Ma was indicted on a corruption charge, the KMT annulled its black-gold exclusion clause which suspends the party membership of any person indicted.
The party is further planning to amend a regulation that suspends the membership of a person convicted of corruption in a first trial, in June, in an effort to retain Ma as a presidential candidate for the party in next year's presidential election.
The KMT had said that Ma's indictment was a result of the DPP using the judiciary as a political weapon to thwart Ma from running in the election.
"We don't understand why the KMT is shifting the responsibility [for corruption] that Ma was supposed to shoulder onto the DPP. Lien, Ma, Wang are all from the upper echelons of the KMT but there was no logic in what they said," Ker said.
DPP caucus whip Wang Hsing-nan (
"People don't care about the struggle within a party. What the people want to know is whether the party can nominate a candidate without a record of corruption," Wang said.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods