There are forces at work trying to block efforts by People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) to collect enough signatures on a petition to take part in the presidential election, Soong said recently.
PFP personnel said Soong’s campaign efforts are being blocked by government officials, while military and educational personnel, as well civil servants, were being encouraged not to help with petition collection work.
Even veterans are being closely watched by local Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chapters, a PFP source said, citing the example of unknown persons taking away petition letters in a veterans’ village in the Banciao District (板橋) of New Taipei City (新北市).
Photo: CNA
Investigations into the incident turned up nothing, PFP spokesman Wu Kun-yu (吳崑玉) said on Saturday, adding that they would improve security to prevent anything similar happening again.
Wu said that a slanderous letter titled “A public message to Mr James Soong” had been mailed to homes in Taoyuan County on Sept. 27, with similar missive also appearing in Nantou County, New Taipei City and Hsinchu City.
As Soong is still collecting signatures for his presidential bid and has yet to officially enter the race, the PFP is unable to take legal action against those they allege are attempting to undermine a candidate’s chances in an election, Wu said.
A lawyer has been consulted to determine whether the party had grounds to sue for actions designed to force a potential candidates to withdraw from the presidential election, Wu added, but the lawyer said there was no such crime.
As for claims that government officials were impeding petition collection, Wu said he had heard that Miaoli County government ordered all civil servants not to help with the petition effort, adding that it was a verbal order rather than a written directive.
Other PFP sources said that a certain township representative had informed them township chiefs had been told not to help Soong if they valued their government subsidies. As a result only more high profile officials such as Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁), former Miaoli County commissioner Fu Hsueh-peng (傅學鵬), retired county commissioners, provincial councilors and corporations were willing to help with collect signatures for Soong, Wu said.
An 80 year-old retired major who helped the PFP in Taoyuan County’s Bade township (八德) was visited six times by KMT personnel, ranging from a section chief to the county party headquarters’ deputy chairman, a PFP source said.
Translated by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift