Greeted by both supporters and protesters as they arrived at the Central Election Commission (CEC), Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her running mate, Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), yesterday completed their official candidate registration, vowing to lead Taiwan to a better future.
“Tsai Ing-wen, dongsuan (凍蒜). Chen Chien-jen, dongsuan,” a group of enthusiastic supporters said as they waved Tsai’s campaign flags, using the Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) phrase for “get elected” as the car carrying Tsai and Chen arrived outside the CEC building.
Escorted by police and national officials and candidates, the pair walked through the crowd into the building with smiles on their faces to make the official candidate registration.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
However, only about 10m away, Tainan residents protested against an underground railroad project and other protesters demonstrated for labor rights.
“Stop ‘lighting up’ large corporations. Respond to workers’ demands,” some chanted, co-otping Tsai’s campaign slogan “light up Taiwan,” while others urged Tsai to promise to hold public hearings on the railroad project.
As Tsai and Chen appeared, the protesters tried to approach to deliver their petition, but were halted by the police, and the two sides briefly clashed.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The Tainan railroad project involves moving railroad tracks underground, which would require forced expropriation of a strip of land to locate temporary tracks while the construction is in progress, affecting more than 400 households.
However, instead of returning the land to the owners after the project is completed, the Tainan City Government, headed by DPP Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德), has decided to turn the land used for temporary tracks into a park, triggering protests from the landowners.
Following the candidate registration, Tsai and Chen left in a motorcade escorted by police cars and police motorcycles — a privilege enjoyed by presidential and vice-presidential candidates once they become official candidates following the registration.
Photo: EPA
Prior to the registration, Tsai vowed she would take Taiwan in a new direction.
“It does not take long to go from here to the CEC; it takes only about 10 minutes; it is simple to register as a candidate as well, but my team and I have been preparing for four years to write down ‘Tsai Ing-wen’ and ‘Chen Chien-jen’ on the form,” Tsai said.
Tsai said she and her team have been through the hardships with Taiwanese for the past four years, and have been to every corner of the nation to understand the needs of the public.
“We do not just propose policies, we hope to propose policies that can touch the hearts of the people,” Tsai said, adding that she hopes to make the democracy, diversity and creativity of Taiwan “the new Asian values.”
“More diverse, more democratic, more fair, more free, more prosperous and more united are the characters of an ideal nation in our mind,” Tsai said. “Toward such a nation, toward such ideals, we are departing now; we are departing to become masters of our hopes.”
Answering questions from the media about her decision to put her personal property into trust, Tsai said the move is to demonstrate her aspiration for clean politics, adding that, if elected, all the officials on her government team would do the same.
Asked about a Bloomberg report that the US is to announce new arms sales to Taiwan next month, Tsai said the US makes such decisions based on the Taiwan Relations Act to provide sufficient weapons for self-defense.
“This is helpful not only for Taiwan’s national security, but also for stability in the Asia-Pacific region, and thus mutually beneficial to both Taiwan and the US,” Tsai said.
Tsai said she does not think the decision comes at a sensitive time, and that it is not connected to the upcoming presidential election.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods