Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) yesterday dismissed concern over the presence of several KMT members at People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong’s (宋楚瑜) recent events, describing them as “personal interactions,” while stressing that party members should support the party’s candidates.
“Many of the activities our party members attended were simply reunions between old acquaintances. For events like these, KMT members can either inform party headquarters of their plans beforehand or offer an explanation afterward,” Chu said.
The New Taipei City mayor said that what really mattered was a united party standing behind its candidates, adding that party regulations require that members support their own candidates.
Chu made the remarks one day after several KMT members, including legislative candidate Hsu Chih-jung (徐志榮), showed up at a Soong event in Miaoli County.
Hsu publicly urged voters to support the PFP chairman in the Jan. 16 presidential race.
Asked whether the KMT has plans to hold large-scale campaign events for Hung amid rumors that the party was to drop her and nominate someone else, Chu said it was not necessary at this stage.
“All of Hung’s recent campaign events, regardless of which cities or counties she visited, were promoted wholeheartedly by the party. At present, it is more important to make frequent trips at the grassroots level,” Chu said.
Chu also said before the party’s Central Standing Committee meeting that he hopes for “clean elections” when the party holds elections for the 32-member committee on Saturday.
Forty-two KMT members are competing for the posts that are to be held for two years, following an amendment to the party charter last year changing the term from one year.
Commenting on the recent stock market crash, Chu said the market has rebounded over the past two days after he discussed the matter with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) and Hung on Monday, and the Executive Yuan was instructed to take action.
“While Taiwan’s economic performance is vulnerable to the impact of the a global economic slowdown, it is vital that we endeavor to build up our economic strength,” Chu said, adding that the KMT would continue to fulfill its duties to the public for as long as the party is in power.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift