A coalition of pro-Taiwan independence groups on Thursday urged President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) not to run for president in 2020.
Taiwan Forever Association president Jerry Cheng (鄭文龍) said that Tsai has successfully turned the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) into a “Taiwanese Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)” and cut ties with independence supporters, including the Formosa Alliance — which has called for a referendum on formal independence and participation in the UN — and former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
“The DPP that valued freedom and democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and the spirit of ‘Taiwanese values’ is gone,” Cheng said.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
The “deep green” camp, or independence supporters, commands at least 1 million votes, and should Tsai insist on running for re-election “the independence supporters will not vote for you,” he said.
Tsai does not represent the DPP, nor does the DPP represent Tsai, Taiwan Teachers’ Union chairperson Hsiao Hsiao-ling (蕭曉玲) said, saying that Tsai would not dare admit that she made the final call on the controversial appointment of Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) as National Taiwan University (NTU) president.
“Should the DPP continue its infighting, we will launch our own efforts,” Hsiao said.
Then-minister of education Yeh Jiunn-rong (葉俊榮) on Monday announced that the Ministry of Education had reluctantly approved Kuan’s appointment.
Premier William Lai (賴清德) the following day approved Yeh’s resignation.
The Presidential office has cited President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as saying that the decision “caught everyone by surprise.”
However, the groups, citing reports that Lai was only informed by text message less than an hour before Yeh’s announcement, said they were not convinced that Yeh would have made the decision without Tsai’s consent.
Kuan was elected in January.
Although the ministry usually rubber stamps university presidents’ appointments, the ministry declined to approve Kuan’s appointment until Monday, citing flaws in the selection process and an undisclosed potential conflict of interest, as Kuan served as an independent director at Taiwan Mobile Co, while company vice chairman Richard Tsai (蔡明興) sat on the 21-member NTU presidential selection committee.
Additional reporting by CNA
Senior judges yesterday met to discuss the constitutionality of a law that makes adultery a criminal offense, before being ordered by Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) to set a date for a constitutional interpretation within the next month. The judges met to discuss Article 239 of the Criminal Code on offenses against marriage and family, after 18 judges had called for a constitutional interpretation of the issue. Taipei District Court Judge Lin Meng-huang (林孟皇) said that while he had previously tried adultery cases and never questioned the law, his feelings changed when trying a case last year involving baseball star Wang
Instead of hating the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), help change it, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said, as he urged young people to join efforts to reform the party. As the nation marked Youth Day on Sunday, Chiang said in a Facebook post that he wanted to remind people that “the KMT used to be very young.” Now, when people think of the KMT, they equate it with older people, he wrote. “Even if [the KMT] is a 100-year-old party, it must maintain a young mentality, and understand what young people want and what they want the KMT to do,” Chiang wrote.
TOO TIRED: Investigators found that the pilot’s lack of alertness could be attributed to a lack of sleep the previous night, when he had slept with his child It was a copilot’s inappropriate operation of the aircraft and the pilot’s insufficient alertness that led to a hard landing of a China Airlines cargo flight on Dec. 13, 2018, the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board said yesterday. Flight CI6844, a Boeing 747-409 which departed from Hong Kong International Airport, landed on the pre-threshold area of runway L5 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, about 21m before the head of the runway, an investigation report said. The hard landing damaged three runway lights, but none of the personnel on board sustained any injuries, the report said. When approaching the runway, the copilot failed to maintain
DISTRUST WARRANTED? The WHO is under China’s control and has become a useless organization, while data from China cannot be trusted, a Control Yuan member said China’s demand that the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, Hubei Province, not be referred to with names like the “Wuhan pneumonia” betrays its lack of confidence in itself, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told lawmakers yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) asked Su, during a interpellation at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, for his view on China’s attempts to redeem its national image in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included China’s efforts to “bleach” its image, including having WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus publicly praise its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, and thanking it for buying time
RSS