Two Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) hopefuls exchanged barbs in a televised debate yesterday as they presented their platforms and sought support from party members in an election for party chairperson scheduled to take place next Sunday.
While incumbent Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) pledged to lead the party back into power in 2012, former two-term Taipei county commissioner You Ching (尤清) challenged Tsai’s leadership, saying she did not perform well in her debate last month with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on the Ma administration’s proposed economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with China.
Tsai said that during her two-year tenure as DPP chairperson, the party managed to improve its image, with various polls showing public trust in the DPP growing and occasionally exceeding that for the governing Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
Although the DPP’s priority is to win back power, Tsai said the party’s core policies are a fairer distribution of wealth, environmental protection and economic growth, rather than just the endless pursuit of GDP growth.
For his part, You took issue with a recent statement by Tsai that the DPP did not rule out engaging in direct dialogue with China. He said such a commitment raised the question of whether under Tsai’s leadership the party would abandon its Taiwan Independence Clause and Resolution on Taiwan’s Future in its dialogue with China.
You also attacked the DPP’s nomination process for November’s five special municipal elections, adding that the failure of the party to choose its candidates for the Taipei City, Sinbei City and Greater Taichung elections was “messed-up.”
Tsai said she was confident the public would find the party’s nominees “combat ready” when the party presents its final list in the next few days.
She said the party would not engage in any dialogue with China if Beijing set preconditions.
Tsai said the DPP would continue to insist that Taiwan’s future must be decided by its 23 million people.
Noting that the number of people who identify with Taiwan is far greater than the number who vote for the DPP, Tsai said the party’s goal was to win them over.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,