The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus yesterday urged Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to clarify her stance on cross-strait relations.
The call came after former DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) said the DPP should not exclude the unification option and that the idea of independence was outside the party’s mainstream opinion — comments that were criticized by several prominent DPP members, who affirmed the party’s platform upholding independence.
KMT legislators accused Tsai of being deliberately elusive on cross-strait issues to “trick Taiwanese.”
“If the DPP rejects the ‘1992 consensus’ and now also alleges that Taiwanese independence has not been its objective since its establishment, what is it that Tsai really stands for?” the caucus said.
KMT caucus whip Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said that with Hsu’s remarks, combined with former Straits Exchange Foundation chairman and DPP legislator Hung Chi-chang’s (洪奇昌) call for the party to abandon its pursuit of de jure independence and the recent visit of DPP Department of Chinese Affairs Director Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) to China, the DPP seems to be aiming to get Tsai off the hook on cross-strait relations.
“However, Tsai should make her stance clear: If not the ‘1992 consensus,’ then what?” Lai asked.
“People say that the KMT is now mired in ‘blue melancholy,’ but the DPP is likewise troubled by ‘green melancholy,’ which is embodied by Hsu’s remarks,” KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said.
“It is having trouble compromising its yearning for the presidency, playing with Taiwanese independence and [handling] its inability to deal with China,” Wu said.
“If it is really like what Tsai said — that the leaning toward independence is a ‘natural element’ encoded in Taiwanese youth — what was Hsu’s claim all about?” Wu said. “And while Chao went to China as a board member of the Straits Exchange Foundation, he sneaked away and came back [yesterday] before he could meet China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Deming (陳德銘) the next day [today].”
“Is Tsai trying to finagle the media voters’ support by making superficial moves?” Wu said.
“However, China has made it clear to them; as long as the DPP holds on to the idea of ‘one country on each side [of the Taiwan Strait]’ and Taiwanese independence, there is no possibility of a DPP-Chinese Communist Party forum,” Wu said.
Wu also referred to Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) “2015 consensus,” calling it a new framework based on the “one China” concept that could acceptable to the DPP.
Ko’s “2015 consensus” says that cross-strait exchanges should be carried out “on the existing political foundation, under the principles of mutual awareness, mutual understanding, mutual respect and mutual cooperation, and in the belief that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are a close family.”
“We hope that the DPP would not turn its ‘green melancholy’ to ‘Taiwan’s melancholy,’” Wu said.
KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) called the DPP hypocritical for not criticizing Ko’s comment that “‘one China’ is not an issue for him.”
The so-called “1992 consensus” refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party that both Taiwan and China acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.
In 2006, then-KMT lawmaker Su Chi (蘇起) said that he made up the term in 2000, when he was Mainland Affairs Council chairman, before the transition of power from the KMT to the DPP.
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