Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative candidate Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) at a campaign rally on Friday night asked voters not to let his New Power Party counterpart Freddy Lim (林昶佐), who has “hair that is longer than a woman’s and is mentally abnormal,” into the legislature. Lin yesterday said Lim’s long hair was not why he called him mentally abnormal.
Lin said the statement about Lim’s long hair was “a description of Lim’s current state without judgement.”
“I find both short and long hair nice-looking. Lim should show his long hair openly; there is no need to hide it,” he added.
“The mentally abnormal part was referring to Lim’s criticism of a prosecutor who pressed charges against and called for a heavy sentence be imposed on Justin Lee (李宗瑞), who sexually assaulted 34 women, calling the prosecutor ‘childish and perverted,’” Lin said.
Lee was convicted of sexual assaults and offenses related to privacy for filming sexual acts with women without their consent. Lim in 2012, when Lee was first charged, criticized a prosecutor who called Lee “a pervert, childish and in need of treatment” for the prosecutor’s conflation of personal feelings and duties.
“The prosecutors’ job is to investigate in accordance with the law and evidence, not for you to vent your personal feelings,” Lim wrote on Facebook at the time, adding that such prosecutors “are themselves the childish perverts who need to go back to school in a society of rule of law.”
Lin on Friday said that people should not let Lim, who took part in the occupation of the Legislative Yuan during the Sunflower movement, but has now “suited up, try to swagger into the Legislative Yuan.”
Lim yesterday said he has always been “unwilling to respond” to the KMT’s accusations, adding that Lin’s remarks on Friday “were completely discriminatory.” Lin was, “with his own perspective, discriminating against someone who is different from him,” Lim said.
Chinese dissident Wang Dan (王丹) yesterday lamented the “degeneration of a 100-year-old party,” referring to the KMT.
The KMT “was a grand party that once shone in history,” Wang said. “Even when it is losing, it should face it with dignity in order to win people’s respect.”
“However, anti-civilization, anti-intellectual and anti-human comments not only have nothing good to offer the party’s image, but only show that it has given up on the future, so it could say whatever it wants,” he said.
921 EARTHQUAKE: The magnitude 7.3 quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged The Central Weather Bureau yesterday received about 50,000 views on Facebook after it posted the data that it collected on Sept. 21, 1999, when the nation was devastated by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. The data showed that the 921 Earthquake hit the nation at 1:47am, with the epicenter being 7km southwest of the bureau’s quake detection center in Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池) at a depth of 8km. The quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged, with the cost of the damage estimated at NT$300 billion (US$10.8 billion at the current
British newspaper The Mail on Sunday reported that Prince Charles met with Bruno Wang (汪家興), a Taiwanese fugitive who describes himself as a Chinese philanthropist and donated ￡500,000 (US$683,522) to the prince’s charity, the Prince’s Foundation. The newspaper reported that Wang is wanted in Taiwan on charges related to money laundering and being a fugitive from justice, allegations he denies, and drew comparisons between Wang and the Russian banker Dmitry Leus. Investigation and cooperation with foreign authorities have found that Bruno Wang’s father, Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), had stashed proceeds from a scandal involving the procurement of Lafayette frigates in 61 bank accounts,
AT ODDS: The KMT called on the government to seek bilateral dialogue with Beijing to resolve the issue that led to the ban on custard apple and wax apple imports Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials and lawmakers yesterday condemned China’s sudden ban on imports of custard apples and wax apples from Taiwan as “obvious political retaliation,” while the opposition called for a scientific investigation into Beijing’s claim to have found pests in imports of the fruits. China earlier yesterday announced a ban on the importation of the two fruits from today, citing repeated discoveries of Planococcus minor, a type of mealybug. The announcement follows a similar ban on Taiwanese pineapples imposed in February. At least Beijing gave a few days’ notice when it banned pineapple imports, an unnamed government official said yesterday. This time
BY OTHER MEANS: China could see CPTPP membership as a means of circumventing trade restrictions imposed by the US, amid an ongoing trade dispute between them The US could invoke a clause in its trade agreement with Canada and Mexico to block China’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a government official said yesterday. Under Article 32.10 of the Exceptions and General Provisions of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), if either Canada or Mexico enter a free-trade agreement with a nonmarket economy — such as China — the US could withdraw from the agreement. “If that clause applies to multilateral free-trade agreements such as the CPTPP — which Mexico and Canada are members of — that might be cause for the two
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