While the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) gradually shifts its focus from political issues to social ones, the party’s three aspirants for the presidential nomination attached little weight to security issues during their second policy presentation on Wednesday, analysts said yesterday.
Yan Jiann-fa (顏建發), director of the International Cooperation Office at Ching Yun University, said he was touched by the televised appearances because it was a rare opportunity for the three contestants to build consensus within the party and the nation as a whole.
“We see the DPP gradually move away from such issues as foreign affairs and defense to people’s livelihood, social welfare programs and good governance,” he told a forum organized by the Institute for National Development to discuss the performances of former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), former DPP chairman Hsu Hsin--liang (許信良) and Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who temporarily stepped down as party chairperson to focus on the primary.
The institute was founded by former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).
Yan said that while Su and Tsai shared more common ground, Hsu had a very different view on issues ranging from government priorities to cross-strait relations.
Describing him as more “upbeat” and “romantic,” Yan said Hsu embraced globalization with more comfort, but ignored the polarization of domestic politics.
“The biggest weakness of the three is that they do not attach great importance to security issues, or they deliberately avoided it,” Yan said. “While Taiwan is highly affected by globalization and its geographical closeness to China, security is paramount.”
Yan said the more open Taiwan was to the world, the more emphasis should be placed on security.
“Opening up to China is inevitable,” he said. “Some might feel it is safer to shut the door and pretend that China is not there, but one day they will find that actually they are not safe at all.”
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
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,
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