The common theme for the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) candidates in the year-end regional elections will be “A fairer Taiwan, better lives” (公平台灣, 進步生活), party spokesman Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said yesterday after a weekly Central Standing Committee meeting.
Speaking on behalf of DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Chao said many people were calling for the party to solidify its strategy ahead of the special municipality elections next year and the presidential election in 2012, but the focus right now was the December polls.
However, the other races would be discussed after this Sunday’s DPP national congress, Chao said.
Saying the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) could resort to buying votes, Chao said Chiayi Commissioner Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) reported that the problem has worsened and could sabotage the DPP’s chance of winning.
Chao said Chen had urged President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who will take up the KMT chairmanship on Saturday, to restrain his candidates and fight a clean fight.
Chen also urged Tsai to mobilize the DPP legislative caucus to bring attention to the issue.
“The chairwoman agreed with Chen and said she would invite members of the DPP caucus to visit the Ministry of Justice and the Chiayi District Prosecutors Office to get to the bottom of the matter,” Chao 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,
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