Civic groups and New Power Party (NPP) legislators yesterday said that the party has not provided substantial help to Kaohsiung land rights advocates, following media reports that the party had involved itself in a fight against a city-sponsored demolition in a bid to lay the foundations for its platform in the 2018 local elections.
“Our main source of help has come from extremely small political parties such as the Free Taiwan Party and Green Party Taiwan,” said Cheng Yuan-wen (鄭淵文), head of a self-help association for residents of Kaohsiung’s Dagouding (大溝頂) — a row of houses in the city’s Qishan District (旗山) that is slated for demolition as part of efforts to improve an underlying drainage canal.
“Our only connection with the NPP is that we asked [NPP legislators] Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) and Kawlo Iyun Pacidal to hold a Taipei press conference, that is all. They absolutely have not sent aides to help us,” he said.
While Kawlo had helped them request government documents, neither legislator had agreed to help with the news conference, Hung said, adding that Kawlo’s office director had spoken at a rally held by the self-help association last month.
Dissatisfaction with the city’s resettlement plans has caused more than 30 residents to resist the demolition, which the city has scheduled for next week.
Media reports earlier this week said Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had asked President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to put pressure on the NPP to stop “interfering” in the Dagouding controversy, after NPP party aides reportedly encouraged residents to resist resettlement.
“We welcome any progressive forces paying attention to Kaohsiung issues, but we cannot accept those progressive forces standing with the traditionalist and ‘feudal’ Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in resisting the Kaohsiung City Government,” she said earlier this week, in response to media queries.
The NPP and DPP cooperated closely during January’s national elections, but are expected to compete against each other for votes in the 2018 local elections.
“It is not that the NPP is ‘interfering’ in anything — these kinds of issues are what we have always cared about,” Kawlo said, while acknowledging that a party aide had spoken at the self-help association’s rally.
“We definitely respect the decision of the city government,” she said, adding the party was still in the process of understanding the issue, with no plans to stake a definite position or provide help to residents before the city’s demolition deadline next week.
NPP Secretary-General Chen Hui-min (陳惠敏) said the party planned to compete in all counties and cities nationwide during the 2018 local elections and would likely establish offices in both Tainan and Kaohsiung.
There were not yet any specific plans for how the party would compete in Kaohsiung, she said.
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