Veteran Taiwan-independence advocate Koo Kwang-min (辜寬敏) yesterday backed Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) campaign slogan of “I am Taiwanese,” saying that the slogan is “as simple as it can get for real Taiwanese.”
The slogan, which appears in Tsai’s first campaign commercial, has been criticized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) campaign as “inciting ethnic divisions.”
“Is there anything wrong with Taiwanese calling themselves Taiwanese? I would say that those who feel uncomfortable with the description are the ones who have the identity problem,” said Koo, 84, a former presidential adviser.
After Ma’s campaign staff criticized Tsai’s slogan, Ma this month wrote on his Facebook page: “I am a descendant of the Yellow Emperor in blood and I identify with Taiwan in terms of my identity. I fight for Taiwan and I am Taiwanese. In nationality, I am a Republic of China [ROC] citizen and I am the president of the ROC.”
“Based on what Ma has done [during the past three years], I wonder how many people would believe his claim of being Taiwanese,” Koo said yesterday, urging voters to support Tsai in the presidential election, which he described as a battle between the DPP and a united front of the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party.
Responding to questions about the recent controversy surrounding the DPP’s legislators-at-large roster, Koo said the list seemed “incomplete” to many people, but he refrained from criticizing Tsai, who played a key role in the compilation of the list.
Koo voiced his support for DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), who is No. 22 on the roster and outside the so-called “safe zone” of the 34-member list, saying that Chai has the best connections with the US Congress among DPP lawmakers, and thus would be a valuable asset for the party.
Koo, founder of the Taiwan Brain Trust think tank, yesterday also endorsed eight young legislative candidates nominated by the DPP.
The candidates — Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政), Ho Po-wen (何博文), Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國), Chien Yu-yen (簡余晏), Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘), David Huang (黃適卓), Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) and Lai Yen-hsueh (賴燕雪) — have formed a coalition called “Our Generation” to advocate a joint effort to advance rights for the underprivileged and the disadvantaged, including women, young people, immigrants, farmers, workers and the handicapped.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater