Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday hurled insults at KMT Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) team and cross-strait policy platform at a solidarity rally held for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairperson candidate Wu Den-yih’s (吳敦義) campaign.
Ma took aim at a recent controversy, when it was revealed that “dummy members,” had been signed to the party en masse, saying that the practice “used to be the Democratic Progressive Party’s trick, not the KMT’s.”
Addressing accusations that members with organized crime backgrounds joined the party, Ma said the reports have had a terrible effect on the party, and such “pests” must be eradicated for the KMT to regain its “sunshine image.”
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The KMT has “a clear understanding of right and wrong, upholds morality and takes its connections with party members seriously, characteristics that have arisen from the party’s 100-year history,” he said.
“However, there are some party comrades that have been ranting at their own brethren; there are even reports alleging that certain party members plan to launch a political vendetta against me, accusing me of being to blame for devastating the party and the nation,” Ma said.
One of the “comrades” Ma was referring to is understood to be KMT Central Policy Committee director Alex Tsai (蔡正元), who has been involved in a series of heated spats and exchanges with Ma’s office, the most recent regarding Ma’s acknowledgment that Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) should be held accountable for the 228 Incident.
Tsai responded that then-Taiwan governor Chen Yi (陳儀), who ordered police and military action against protesters, was less corrupt than Ma.
The vendetta that Ma mentioned is believed to relate to forums organized by Chang Ya-chung (張亞中), a close aide of Hung’s and the principal of the “Sun Yat-sen School” set up by Hung.
The school, launched at the beginning of this month, was said to be “for the appraisal of past KMT leaders and their achievements and misdeeds.”
The school evaluated former presidents Chiang Kai-shek on March 2, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) on March 9 and Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) on Thursday.
Ma is scheduled to be discussed on Thursday next week.
Ma also repeated that the so-called “1992” consensus has benefited Taiwan greatly and was “not a ‘consensus’ between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party, but one reached, under the direction of former president Lee Teng-hui, between Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.”
“One China, different interpretations” has garnered a high level of support, he said, adding that it should not be “arbitrarily overlooked, revised or abolished.”
“It should not be changed to [Hung’s] ‘one China, same interpretation,’ which has left many of our supporters disconcerted,” Ma said.
The “1992 consensus” refers to a supposed understanding reached during the cross-strait talks in 1992 that both Taiwan and China acknowledge that there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.
In 2006 former Mainland Affairs Council minister Su Chi (蘇起) admitted he made up the term in 2000, before the KMT handed power to the Democratic Progressive Party.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the