Both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday called on voters to be on the lookout for "dirty tricks" played by their rival camps in the run-up to Saturday's presidential election.
The KMT yesterday listed possible election tactics from the DPP and urged voters not to forget the "319 shooting incident" of 2004.
KMT Secretary-General Wu Den-yi (
PHOTO: TANG SHIH-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
Wu also urged the government not to raise tensions across the Taiwan Strait and use it as an election tactic.
KMT CLAIMS
"As the presidential election approaches, the National Security Bureau should be on high alert and protect all candidates, so the shadow of the 319 incident will be gone," Wu told a press conference at the KMT headquarters.
The pan-blue camp accused the DPP of staging the shooting in order to win the 2004 election, saying the incident was "self-directed and self-acted."
Wu said DPP election tactics also included spreading rumors about the KMT bribing voters, exacerbating cross-strait tensions, or even fabricating sexual scandals or affairs to attack Ma.
Wu said a woman once suggested that KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
DPP RESPONSE
Meanwhile, DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh's (
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-ching (
She said the DPP camp had come up with a list of five "dirty tricks" the KMT has played so far.
First, Yeh said, the KMT spread fabricated information about a planned assassination of Ma to create social panic and seek voters' sympathy.
Second, she said, the DPP suspected the Ma campaign offices in Yunlin, Chiayi and Nantou counties of buying votes because they had paid people an exorbitant amount of money to distribute campaign pamphlets.
Third, the KMT manipulates the bidding on the presidential election to create a bandwagon effect, Yeh said, claiming that the KMT camp also creates stock market rumors to provoke small investors to sell off their stocks in a panic.
Finally, she said the KMT exposed their scandals and blamed it on the DPP.
Yeh said she hoped voters would see the KMT's tricks clearly and use their wisdom to make sound judgement.
"The DPP will not use the KMT's dirty tricks," she said. "We are asking national security, investigators and prosecutors to do their job and maintain social stability."
Hsieh spokesman Shen Fa-hui (
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
RSS