Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said the Presidential Office and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) should refrain from politicking that would create further divisions in society.
“Taiwan is a nation with multiple ethnic groups, so everyone should learn to listen and understand when encountering someone who has a different view point on an issue, this is especially for politicians,” Tsai said.
“Politicians should learn their lessons from history to make the nation and the people more harmonious. It is not a good thing to manipulate differences between different groups of people for political gains,” she said.
Her comments came after Presidential Office spokesperson Charles Chen (陳以信) on Saturday called Tsai “hypocritical” after Tsai urged more tolerance and understanding of former president Lee Teng-hui’s (李登輝) remarks that Taiwan did not take part in the “War of Resistance Against Japan,” and that most of the Taiwanese who joined the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II believed that they were fighting for their motherland, which at the time was Japan.
Hours later, Hung told a nighttime rally that if she is not elected next year, “Taiwan would be sold to Japan.”
Lee yesterday defended Tsai.
“[Tsai] is not hypocritical, she is hard-working, and that is why many people support her,” he said. “If you [President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九)] are incapable, you should work harder. What good does it to do criticize others? Do you get more votes by lashing out at me? I do not believe so.”
In other developments, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said he had a brief chat with Lee at a fund-raising dinner in Taipei for the Lee Teng-hui Foundation on Saturday night.
Asked what they discussed, Ko said that he simply wanted to express solidarity with the former president, adding that he does not think aggravating political tensions between the pan-green and pan-blue camps helps the elections.
“So it is beyond my understanding why Ma did that,” Ko said.
Meanwhile, Tsai was asked to elaborate on the difference between her “alliance for governance” (執政大聯盟) proposal and People First Party Chairman James Soong’s (宋楚瑜) idea of a “cohabitation government,” and of the possibility of a DPP-KMT coalition.
“The ‘alliance for governance’ means that we would hope to form a stable majority with our friends who have the same objectives in the legislature, while also inviting people with similar beliefs and the same degree of sense of responsibility into the administration,” Tsai said. “We would welcome all talented people to join the administrative team to form a team that’s strong in execution as well as communicating with the public.”
Additional reporting by Sean Lin
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
RSS