Wuer Kaixi yesterday castigated Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Wang Yu-chi’s (王郁琦) post-election praise for the so-called “1992 consensus,” calling it “a semantic contradiction” when the “consensus” is of “different interpretations.”
Wang, in response to Taipei mayor-elect Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) calling the “consensus” outdated, panned Ko for “commenting on something of which he has little understanding” and said that the consensus has allowed President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration to make progress in the cross-strait relationship development since 2008.
Wuer Kaixi — a student leader in China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests and now a Taiwanese citizen who announced his candidacy for next year’s legislative by-election in Greater Taichung earlier this month — slammed Wang’s acclaim for the “consensus,” calling it a lie that has lingered for 22 years.
“There is no ‘consensus’ that is for each side to ‘each have their own respective interpretation.’ This is a semantic contradiction. The consensus of the ‘1992 consensus’ is that there is no such consensus,” he said.
The KMT has touted the “creative ambiguity” of the alleged agreement, “but vagueness is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants. Why? The CCP is exactly the one who does not dare to touch on the issue of [Taiwan’s] sovereignty. The CCP would have to say that ‘one China’ represents the People’s Republic of China if clarity presides. Does it dare to say that to Taiwanese? And who is it that has been playing along with the CCP?” Wuer Kaixi said.
“When the social consensus has expressed through social movements its distrust of the CCP, the vagueness does not fare well for Taiwan,” he said. “So if I am elected as a legislator, I will promote an open and public attitude toward the ‘one China’ problem. As a democratic nation, Taiwan has nothing to fear.”
When asked whether he then supports the Taiwanese independence movement, Wuer Kaixi said it is undeniable that Taiwan, as the Republic of China, is an independent sovereign.
“There is no question of independence; there is only the question of ‘unification,’” he said.
A change to the nation’s official name from Republic of China to Taiwan would be a “small problem” which could be altered via a referendum, he said.
“The substantive problem involves sovereignty. And the international community should respect that Taiwan is an independent sovereign,” he added.
Yang Sen-hong (楊憲宏), chairman of the Taiwan Association for China Human Rights, who hosted the news conference for Wuer Kaixi, seconded the opinion, insofar as the consensus was — as the name indicates — reached in 1992, when Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was president.
“Ma needs to stop his self-deception when Lee has already announced that there is no such thing as the ‘1992 consensus,’” Yang said.
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