Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate and Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) yesterday accused President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration of causing “unspeakable suffering” to Taiwanese.
There must be peaceful exchanges across the Taiwan Strait to facilitate the flow of people and goods, which would make Taiwan richer, Han said.
He called on his supporters to vote the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) out of the Presidential Office and the Legislative Yuan in next year’s elections.
Photo: Liu Pin-chuan, Taipei Times
Han made the remarks in a meeting at the Nantou County Council.
While Taiwan’s exports are subjected to a 10 percent tariff, the nation’s main competitor, South Korea, enjoys preferential taxes on 70 percent of its exports via a free-trade arrangement it negotiated with the UK and other nations, Han said, without elaborating.
“Our products are sold at higher prices and we lost Chinese tourists not traveling in group tours,” he said. “Without people coming in or goods going out, the economy cannot grow.”
“The elite residents of Nantou must unite for their children’s sake and vote the DPP out of office to allow Taiwan to have a future,” he said.
In response to requests for comment on remarks by former KMT legislator Chen Hung-chang (陳宏昌) that Han spent his time as a lawmaker “boozing, partying and womanizing,” Han said he did smoke, drink and play mahjong at the legislature.
“However, that was Han Kuo-yu from 10 or 20 years ago, not the man I am now,” Han said. “Chen was remembering the old Han and if he wants to I can prove it to him that I have changed.”
Chen, a KMT member and head of New Taipei City’s Younglian Temple (湧蓮寺), made the comment during Tsai’s visit to his temple earlier yesterday.
KMT New Taipei City chapter head Lee Chien-lung (李乾龍) said that Chen’s remarks were inappropriate and a disciplinary meeting would convene today to discuss possible disciplinary action.
“While the party expects Chen to greet the guests to his temple, it was inappropriate for a member of the party’s Central Supervisory Committee to criticize Han and elevate Tsai,” Lee said.
Additional reporting by Chen Hsin-yu
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS