President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking re-election, yesterday focused his campaign efforts in Greater Kaohsiung, visiting several local markets and tourist attractions in the traditional pan-green stronghold and seeking support in the area.
Former Kaohsiung county commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興), a former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) member who left the party last year and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) accompanied Ma as he visited the old-street district of Cishan (旗山) in Greater Kaohsiung.
Amid cheers from supporters, Ma tasted traditional snacks while shaking hands with the crowd. Local vendors also presented him with garlic and a bundle of zongzi — bamboo leaf-wrapped rice dumplings tied together with string — as a blessing for his re-election bid.
Photo: CNA
Ma later attended a ceremony to launch his support group in Cishan, lauding Yang for his previous efforts in local development and reconstruction work after Typhoon Morakot caused serious damage in southern Taiwan in 2009.
He also took the occasion to defend the signing of the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) last year as a great measure to boost the sale of agricultural products and said locally grown bananas would be included in the tariff-reduction list of agricultural products next year, which is expected to boost sales of fruit.
“My administration has successfully helped move Taiwan forward from the closed-door policies of the former DPP government ...The government will open up more opportunities for Taiwan if I am re-elected,” he said.
Also on the last day of the year, Ma rushed to Greater Tainan to attend a New Year’s Eve party and attend a performance by a percussion troupe.
He later traveled to Greater Taichung to attend the New Year’s Eve countdown party there, but only stayed briefly as he traveled to Taoyuan and joined Taoyuan County Commissioner John Wu (吳志揚) to give his blessings to the crowd.
Ma saved the final countdown moment for Taipei City as he rushed back to the nation’s capital at about 11:30pm, joining first lady Chow Mei-ching (周美青) and Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) on stage at the city’s countdown party to usher in the New Year, while additionally consolidating his strong support base in Taipei.
The Taipei City Government brushed aside skepticism that Ma’s attendance at the countdown party was a campaign event for his re-election bid and said the president, who is a former Taipei mayor, also participated in the countdown party in 2009, and that he and Chow were invited to attend the countdown party to give his blessings to the public.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods