Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Central Policy Committee director Alex Tsai (蔡正元) yesterday denied a media report that the KMT has split into “pro-war” and “pro-peace” factions on the party assets issue, with Tsai leading the former.
“The [Chinese-language] Apple Daily’s report that the KMT headquarters have seen in-party conflicts and split into a so-called ‘pro-peace’ faction headed by [KMT Vice Chairman] Steve Chan (詹啟賢) and a ‘pro-war’ faction led by myself is utter fabrication,” Tsai, who also serves as party spokesman, said on Facebook.
Tsai said since he assumed the post as director of the KMT’s Central Policy Committee in April, he has never played a part in the KMT headquarters’ policymaking on party assets.
The reason is simple, because party assets is never part of the Central Policy Committee’s remit, Tsai said.
“I have never voiced my opinions or attended a meeting concerning the KMT’s assets. It is appalling how far the Apple Daily would go in making things up,” Tsai said.
According to yesterday’s Apple Daily, Chan, who has played a key role in the KMT assets issue and served as convener of the KMT’s “party assets response group,” has recently stepped away from the KMT’s center of power, sparking speculation that it was due to friction between him and Tsai.
Citing an unnamed source, the paper said the main factor in the pair’s falling out was that Chan had sought to establish a negotiating channel with Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) by sending lawyers or meeting Koo himself.
“However, Tsai is of the opinion that such negotiations are unnecessary,” the source was quoted as saying.
Chan asked a third party to send a message to Koo telling him he would no longer be able to take charge of the party assets matter after the committee’s decision on Nov. 25 to order the KMT to transfer its shares of Central Investment Co (中央投資) and Hsinyutai (欣裕台) to the government, the source said.
Reached for a comment by the Apple Daily, Chan said “there is no longer a place for him” in the KMT’s asset fight, but declined to elaborate.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Hu Wen-chi (胡文琦) issued a news release denying that Chan had talked to the daily.
The KMT’s Administration and Management Committee is in charge of commenting on matters concerning party assets, Hu said.
“The party has only one goal when it comes to party assets, which is to carry out a converging attack and join different forces within the party to resolve conflicts,” Hu said, dismissing rumors of internal strife.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching