President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) daughter Lesley Ma (馬唯中) is safe living in Hong Kong, National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Der-sheng (蔡得勝) said yesterday.
Tsai was responding to press inquiries about her security in the Chinese special administrative region.
Speaking on the sidelines of a legislative Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee meeting, Tsai said an effective mechanism for protecting the safety of members of the first family has long been in place, in accordance with existing laws and regulations.
According to the Special Service Act (特種勤務條例), members of the first family are not guarded by special service agents if they reside outside Taiwan.
However, special protective measures can be adopted with the approval of the bureau head if security concerns arise.
Tsai said the security mechanism to protect the first family has been crafted in terms of the law, practical needs and special features of the environments in which the members of the first family are living.
“Besides upholding the rule of law, the establishment of the mechanism also requires the consent and cooperation of family members and should meet special features of the living environments,” Tsai said.
To date, the mechanism has been operating smoothly, he added.
The Presidential Office confirmed a week earlier that Leslie Ma, the elder of the president’s two daughters, was married last year to Allen Tsai (蔡沛然), who currently works in Hong Kong.
According to Hong Kong media reports, she lives in a hillside apartment owned by her husband, a fashion model-turned-banker.
Lesley Ma tends to use public transportation and typically keeps a low profile, the reports said.
DIPLOMATIC MOVES: Beijing is reportedly pressing the state after reports of forming links with Taiwan, while the ministry is also planning to reopen its office in Guam soon A representative office is set to open in Somaliland at the end of this month, at the earliest, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday amid reports that Beijing is sending a diplomatic delegation to the east African country. The ministry on July 1 announced that Taiwan and Somaliland would establish representative offices, following a report by the Somaliland Chronicle Web site. It said at the time that the two nations did not plan to establish formal ties. Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi has instructed close confidants to explore the possibility of “mutual recognition between Taiwan and Somaliland,” the Somaliland Chronicle reported
The Supreme Court on Tuesday found four men guilty of attempted murder in the 2017 stabbing of Spanish surfer Ignacio Prio on a Pingtung County beach in the final ruling in the case, sentencing them to three-and-a-half to six years in prison. The defendants had appealed their convictions for attempted murder in the first and second rulings, which had also led to prison sentences ranging from three-and-a-half years to six years. The then-42-year-old Prio went to Jialeshui Beach (佳樂水) near Kenting (墾丁) on March 31, 2017, was attacked after he asked four men to remove their fishing lines from an area
‘IMMORAL, INSINCERE’: Huang Kun-huei said that Ma was ‘distorting history’ in claiming that Lee Teng-hui laid the foundation for the so-called ‘1992 consensus’ Former Presidential Office secretary-general Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) on Saturday rejected former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) claim that former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) had been a proponent of Beijing’s “one China” principle. Lee, who served as president from 1988 to 2000, died in Taipei on Thursday last week. After visiting the Taipei Guest House on Saturday to pay his respects to Lee, Ma posted on Facebook that “28 years ago on this day” Lee hosted a session of the now-defunct National Unification Council, during which he passed a resolution on the “one China” principle. That resolution became the basis of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s
NEW ERA: Taiwan, which has controlled its virus outbreak, now faces the challenge of safely resuming economic exchanges with other nations, Chang Shan-chwen said People should not focus entirely on having zero new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Taiwan, but neglect overall control over the disease situation, Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) specialist advisory panel convener Chang Shan-chwen (張上淳) said yesterday. Chang made the remark at a forum in Taipei discussing the steps Taiwan should take in the post-pandemic era, organized by the Chinese-language magazine Global Views Monthly. Chang, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩), and Stanford University’s Center for Policy, Outcomes and Prevention director C. Jason Wang (王智弘) each made a presentation, followed by a panel discussion with Chang, Wang and Buddhist Tzu
RSS