Leaked cables from the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) mention almost all the nation’s well-known politicians in both the pan-blue and pan-green camps, baring politicians’ true colors and throwing Taiwanese political circles into chaos.
The cables, released by -WikiLeaks on Aug. 30, suggest all major players from both camps are willing to tell all when they talk to AIT officials, whether commenting on current affairs or giving personal views about other political figures.
According to the cables, former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) said in July 2007 that then-KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) candidacy in the 2008 election was because “We have no other choice.”
According to an AIT cable from May 2007, Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) was another KMT heavyweight who voiced his displeasure about Ma, because Ma had succumbed to blackmail by the People First Party (PFP), and lost a chance to “show guts” by ceding several legislative nominees to PFP members.
Infighting among the pan-green camp was also revealed by WikiLeaks.
Former DPP lawmaker Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said in January 2008 to a senior AIT official that then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) up till that time was still not willing to share power, leading pan-green supporters to wonder who would run in the 2008 March presidential election. In the end, Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) ran — a development that she said would be unfavorable for the DPP campaign.
After Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) became DPP chairwoman in 2008, former party chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told then-AIT Taipei office director Stephen Young in October that Tsai was politically inexperienced and did not know enough about the party’s grassroots.
Hsieh also said Tsai was “too much like a scholar” and did not have enough in common with the party’s rank-and-file.
Su on Wednesday openly admitted his “former concerns” about Tsai, but said those concerns have now been addressed.
Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃), a former premier and a senior official in Tsai’s election campaign office, said Tsai is indeed an academic, adding that since she took over the party she has led it to victory in every election and that her challenge to the KMT’s Ma is so strong that “I believe she will become a good national leader.”
Another striking leak involved Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who was quoted in a cable as accusing Ma of incompetency and Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) of corruption.
Asked for comments by the press on Wednesday, Wang said Ma is a competent leader and Wu is a clean politician, adding that the leaks on the Internet were just rumors.
Wu, meanwhile, was incredulous, saying Wang “could not possibly” have made such an “unexpected and outrageous” remark about him.
Some other disclosures by WikiLeaks about politics include Ma telling Young that his information showed that Hsieh, his rival in the 2008 presidential election, had sent “secret envoys” to China to ensure that Hsieh was seen as different from Chen, whose pro-independence stance had angered China.
The US diplomats sending the cable to Washington made a special note on this: “Not heard before.”
Hsieh cleared himself on Wednesday, saying that the note itself indicated that he had never sent any secret envoys to China. Hsieh accused Ma of informing on him, tipping him off to foreigners — a practice that amounted to an international scandal for which Ma could be prosecuted.
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
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
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