Medical advisers to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (
Janice Chen (
Chen was referring to Chan's remarks describing Hsieh's medical advisers as "gray-haired maids in an imperial palace."
Chan is former dean of Chi Mei Hospital and now a top aide of KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
Responding to the complaint that Hsieh had included medical professionals in his advisory team without notifying the individuals concerned, Li Tzu-yao (李鎡堯), one of Hsieh's medical advisers, challenged the KMT to substantiate its claim with evidence.
Li also dismissed criticism that they had switched their political allegiance, saying that national identification was a cardinal issue of right and wrong and that they would not change their political views on a whim.
Li said that medical professionals have developed close relations with the pan-green camp over the years.
At a separate setting yesterday, DPP Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (
Cho was referring to the KMT allegedly adding names of overseas businesspeople in the name list of Ma's New York support group without seeking their consent.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper) said on Monday that New York Taiwanese Businesspeople Association chairwoman Chang Ya-feng (
The KMT may have dismissed the incident as a mere mistake, but it made the fabrication sound "so natural," Cho said yesterday.
In response to Hsieh camp accusations that the Ma camp had forged the list of individuals in the medical support group and included foreign Taiwanese businessmen in its list of supporters, Ma said yesterday that his camp would look into the issue.
"I didn't know about it until I saw it in the newspaper," Ma said yesterday while campaigning for KMT legislative candidates in Taoyuan County. "We are looking into the issue and will give an explanation later."
Ma camp spokesman Luo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said that overseas support groups were independently formed and operated by overseas Taiwanese and that the Ma campaign office would ask the support groups to make corrections if there were mistakes in the list.
While the Ma camp said it would look into the matter, the Overseas Ma Ying-jeou-Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) support group posted an apology on its Web site (www.ma2008.org/index.php) on Monday for mistakenly including directors of local Taiwanese businesspeople groups as contractors for the support group.
Commenting on the establishment of Hsieh's medical personnel support group in Taipei on Sunday and the camp's criticism against him for including medical personnel in his support group without seeking their consent, Ma said he understood the pressure put upon some people who offered support to both camps. He did not elaborate.
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