The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) yesterday said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) should be wary of making remarks during his inauguration speech that might be deemed damaging to national sovereignty, such as defining Taiwan’s relations with China as “one country, two areas (一國兩區).”
Saying Ma already suffers from a low approval rating even before his inauguration to a second term, TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) urged the president to seriously consider whether he should stay on.
Huang made the remarks at a press conference held at Jingfumen (景福門) on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei yesterday morning ahead of Ma’s second inauguration today.
Huang accused Ma of misleading the public, listing what he described as “fraud” committed by the president.
First, Huang said, Ma fabricated the existence of the so-called “1992 consensus,” referring to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s argument that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait agree that there is “one China, with each side having its own interpretation.”
Huang said Ma championed the country’s name — the Republic of China — during his presidential campaign, but that after he was re-elected, he began referring to cross-strait relations as “one country, two areas.”
Huang also accused Ma of breaking his promise to rid the KMT of its ill-gotten assets and to pay back half of his salary if he did not fulfill his “6-3-3” campaign promise.
Ma also exaggerated the benefits of Taiwan signing an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with Beijing, Huang said.
“Because Ma broke his word again and again, he has a credibility crisis,” Huang said, urging the public to take part in the TSU’s protest today in Taipei to air their anger at Ma.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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