Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) confirmed yesterday that former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) once asked him to be premier.
“It did happen,” Wang told reporters in the legislature. “But you all know what happened next. It was a matter of negotiation between the two parties rather than something I could decide. The matter was never settled.”
Chen’s office released a copy of a letter from Chen to Wang on Tuesday. In the letter, to be published in Chen’s next forthcoming book, the former president said he had once asked Wang to be premier and Wang had not objected to the idea.
Chen said Wang later declined the invitation for fear of opposition from within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The letter also said that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) suggested in 2004 that Wang and former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Hong Chi-chang (洪奇昌) team up to run for legislative speaker and vice speaker.
The letter said the pan-green camp had backed the suggestion but Wang later went back on his promise and dropped the idea.
Wang said yesterday Chen’s remarks were a “misunderstanding” because he had made it clear at the time that it would have been impossible for him to work with Hong without the KMT’s consent. He also said he had told Lee prior to the 2004 speaker election that cooperation with Hong was impossible.
KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) accused Chen yesterday of trying to “drive a wedge” between KMT politicians by releasing the letter.
Deputy secretary-general of the KMT caucus Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟) said the Ministry of Justice should be blamed for allowing Chen to publish books even though he is in detention.
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