Former minister of transportation and communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時), who served as an adviser to Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) presidential campaign team, yesterday said allegations that he was involved in a quid pro quo exchange between the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) headquarters and Hung was “stupid.”
Yeh on Thursday said that KMT headquarters offered to give Hung NT$30 million (US$922,708) for her campaign on Oct. 5, a disclosure that led Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) to accuse Yeh and the KMT of agreeing to a quid pro quo arrangement for Hung to step down as the party’s presidential candidate.
All previous KMT presidential candidates received their funding from party headquarters, “so there should be no problem at all for the party to fund [its candidates],” Yeh said in rejection of the accusation.
“Hung had said [at the beginning of her campaign] that she would not need the party’s money, so [when the campaign found itself running short of funds] we said we would ‘borrow’ and then pay back the funds with public subsidies for candidates after the election,” Yeh added.
Yeh said that Chen’s accusation was a “stupid comment.”
“Had it been a quid pro quo arrangement, it would have taken place differently,” he added.
When asked whether Hung knew about him asking KMT headquarters for funds, Yeh said: “Yes, I think she knew.”
The former minister said that the decision was reached through discussion and coordination among Hung, KMT Secretary-General Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) and himself.
However, the Chinese-language Apple Daily cited “a friend of Hung” as saying that Hung never asked Yeh to borrow money from the party.
“According to the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), a subsidy for a candidate is to be received by the party that nominated the candidate. One of Hung’s aides had asked [after Hung said she would not use the KMT’s funds] whether the party would help cover her campaign expenses, as the KMT would receive millions from the subsidy after the elections, but the party did not respond positively to the proposal, even after Hung was nominated on July 19 by the party congress,” the friend was quoted as saying.
“It is strange that Yeh would ask Lee for NT$30 million on Oct. 5, since party headquarters had always been reluctant to provide funding, and on Oct. 3 Chu tried to talk Hung out of her run, followed by the KMT Central Standing Committee proposing an extempore party congress on Oct. 4,” the report quoted the friend as saying.
According to the report, the friend said that Hung was unaware of Yeh’s actions, and later demanded that Yeh return the check after she was offered the funds.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS