The two candidates vying on Sunday for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairmanship were busy soliciting support yesterday, with the female contender Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) appealing to young party members and the 82-year-old Koo Kwang-ming's (辜寬敏) appealing to old.
Tsai urged young party members to vote in Sunday’s election and promised, if elected, to strengthen the party’s Youth Department and allow more young members to participate in the party’s policy-setting process.
It might be meaningful to add a new position of vice chairman and reserve it for a young member, she said, but she thought it would be more useful and feasible to let young members play a more decisive role at the Youth Department.
She also pledged to reform the party into one that is honest, unified, ambitious and with broad horizons.
Tsai made the remarks while addressing an event organized by the party’s young members. She said she was glad to see party members of all ages, especially young people, concerned about party affairs and participating.
At a different setting yesterday afternoon, Koo’s campaign asked Tsai to follow the example of DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) and drop out of the race.
They also asked her to withdraw the comments she made on Wednesday. Wang Ding-yu (王定宇), a spokesman for Koo’s camp, said Tsai should explain why she said the official reason for Chai’s withdrawal might be different from the real one. Wang also asked Tsai to explain why she said her rival represented the old and idealistic while she represented the new and practical.
Chai, who has formed an alliance with Koo, said he had not made any deal with Koo and said he did not represent the past but was a man of ideals and achievement.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift