Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday said they were stupefied to find that the party’s leaders have decided to appeal against a Taipei District Court ruling that has allowed Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to retain his party membership, when party members had just initiated a signature petition within the party against lodging an appeal.
The KMT said on Thursday that it had decided to appeal against the court ruling in favor of Wang, with its commissioned attorney Lo Min-ton (羅明通) saying that the ruling, if not appealed, would have an ex post facto effect that would render all of the party’s previous resolutions to strip party members of their membership invalid.
Wang said yesterday he respects the party’s decision and is “taking it in [his] stride.”
KMT Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆) said he was shocked to find on Thursday that the party has appealed, when he had that very same morning launched a signature petition within the party, with several legislators’ signatures already collected.
Tsai added that he would still hand in the petition to call on the party to retract its appeal.
KMT Legislator Luo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) called the move “stupid” and complained over the appeal.
“I don’t know what they are thinking. They just will not let the matter rest, thinking that everybody else has nothing better to do,” Luo said.
KMT Legislator Lu Chia-chen (盧嘉辰) said that legislators have been trying to pave a way of saving face for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who doubles as KMT chairman, to get out of the situation.
“But no chance was given [for them to pave the way] except a cold shoulder,” he said.
Separately, Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) panned Ma for “always standing on the opposite side of the people’s will.”
“He is attempting to crash head-on into an oncoming train by appealing,” he said.
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:
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