Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) stole the election in 2004 and silenced the public through a system of fear, former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) told a Chinese-language newspaper in a recent interview.
In the interview published on Sunday by the Chinese Communist Party-affiliated Global Times, Lien, who lost the 2004 election to Chen by a razor-thin margin, said it was his “firm belief” that Chen was re-elected through fraud.
“How he manipulated the election remains unknown, even today,” Lien said, adding that after securing his position, Chen adopted a “provocative policy” on relations with China, such as proposals for constitutional amendments and referendums.
“The problem was that he dominated public opinion, giving a misleading impression that he represented everything in Taiwan,” Lien said. “But was that the fact? The public seemed to have been silenced for fear of his power.”
“The KMT, with its historical values and commitments, refused to accept that,” he said.
Asked by the Global Times reporter to comment on a recent visit to China by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) spokesman Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) to participate in academic exchanges, Lien said: “I haven’t taken notice of the case and have no idea about their situation, either.”
“I can’t comment on the DPP’s decisions, but I always support broad non-governmental communications across the [Taiwan Strait],” he said. “More exchanges will promote mutual understanding, relationships and cooperation … Misunderstanding and barriers, no matter whether natural or artificial, do not help peace, cooperation or harmony at all.”
Turning to Lien’s visit to China in 2005, he said that Chen had made things difficult for him.
“I accepted the invitation of [Chinese President] Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), general secretary of the Communist Party, because I wanted our voice to be heard by everyone, the voice which represents the majority of [the] people [in Taiwan],” he said.
“Hu invited me in early March that year and I finally arrived on the mainland at the end of April. I asked Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤), who was the vice president of the KMT [and present chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation], to arrange the trip, but Chen tried to make things difficult for him. Chen said I showed him no respect with my planned visit to the mainland,” Lien said.
Lien said he called Chen and clarified his purpose was to confirm the KMT’s commitment to the so-called “1992 consensus” and the “one China” principle.
“My secretary told his [Chen’s] secretary that we required bodyguards for our delegation, but we were besieged by about 2,000 armed men,” Lien said. “Actually, many difficult things happened.”
He did not elaborate.
Lien’s meetings with Hu gave rise to a five-point consensus for promoting peace and development across the Taiwan Strait.
“In the past few years, there’s been progress in many areas [of these points], but on some there has still been little progress, such as on the second one, working together to formally end the state of hostilities and reach peace,” he said. “This is where we next have to make more efforts.”
“The Chinese mainland and Taiwan wasted too much time in the past. We now need to take lessons to get to know each other better,” Lien said. “We have good interactions between mainlanders and Taiwanese because of more communication opportunities, which is the biggest invisible asset in cross-strait relations.”
Asked whether political dialogue or a military mutual trust mechanism were possible or should be promoted during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) second term, Lien said the relationship should not be interpreted through a “narrow-minded political lens.”
“Both sides should be flexible when promoting relations,” he said.
“The Taiwan question is not produced either by the mainland or Taiwan. It’s a question that history has left us and mirrors the historic sufferings of China in the last hundred years. It can’t be easily solved,” he said.
“We could handle the question in the way that building blocks are piled up: Do what we can do now and make preparations for the future as much as possible, until a meaningful structure is built,” he said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS