New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) on Thursday said in an interview that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is “more dangerous” than President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and could “be ruthless” because she is “single, without family burdens.”
In an interview with the China Review News, when he was asked to comment on remarks that Tsai is a 2.0 version of Ma or another Chen, Yok said he has long before said that Tsai is a “female version of Ma,” as they “lack ideas, but think highly of themselves and do not take advice.”
“However, she would be worse than Ma, for Ma has done a lot that he should have done to sustain a peaceful foundation. Unless she renounces the Taiwan independence clause [in the DPP’s party charter], she would not have the support from the pan-blue camp or the approval of the Chinese Communist Party if she continues her equivocation. However, if she does, she would be harshly criticized by the people who support Taiwanese independence,” Yok said.
“What is different between Tsai and Chen is that she is single. Single people do things more ruthlessly because they have less to care about compared with those who have children. She is more dangerous than Chen. One day she might go amok; she might ally with the US and Japan and start a war against China,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator-at-large candidate Hu Chu-sheng (胡筑生), who is head of the party’s Huang Fu Hsing (黃復興) military veterans’ branch, on Wednesday night said on a political talk show of the nation’s military system that: “If everyone were Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) in the army, Taiwan would have become a female country (女人國) long before.”
Hung died from abuse when serving in the military in 2013. His death sparked a mass demonstration calling for military reform. Hung’s sister, Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸), now a New Power Party legislative candidate, accepted calls to enter politics after attracting public attention for her fight against the Ministry of National Defense following Hung Chung-chiu’s death.
Hung Tsu-yung yesterday said on Facebook that the military would continue to abuse people as long as its actions do not come to light.
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