The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) plans to focus the last month of its campaign on distracting from controversies surrounding its legislator-at-large candidates, a source said yesterday.
Instead, the campaign would continue to zero in on allegations against Yang Hui-ju (楊蕙如) over a post online that has been implicated in the suicide of a diplomat, and would attempt to strengthen reactionary sentiment directed at the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, the source added.
The KMT hopes to draw attention away from criticism of legislator-at-large candidate Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷), whom the DPP have pushed to remove from the list, sending the KMT scrambling, the source said.
Photo: Chiang Chih-hsiung, Taipei Times
Wu’s addition to the list has been scrutinized after it was revealed that he had attended a Chinese government event in Beijing where he stood for the Chinese national anthem.
“Although Wu is only a legislator-at-large nominee, the controversy surrounding him has affected the campaigns of other nominees,” the source said. “It’s been like a game of hot potato where legislators are being asked about Wu and don’t know how to answer.”
Wu, believing that he would not be harmful to the KMT, has turned up uninvited at other legislators’ campaign events, the source said.
“He and former army commander-in-chief General Chen Chen-hsiang (陳鎮湘) have appeared at campaign events causing a headache for other nominees. All they can do is try their best to prevent him from taking the stage,” the source said.
Former New Taipei City mayor and KMT central campaign office head Eric Chu (朱立倫) has not yet started online campaign efforts, the source said, adding that the focus of the KMT’s overall online campaign was expected to follow that of its presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu’s (韓國瑜) campaign, which was chosen by Han’s campaign office spokeswoman Anne Wang (王淺秋).
The KMT theme in this election cycle has been “taking down President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and replacing her with the ‘Republic of China clique,’” the source said.
The DPP’s focus on Wu has helped its own efforts, but it has also faced pressure from several matters, including the Ching Fu Shipbuilding Co (慶富造船) corruption scandal, the Yang case and most recently, the Far Eastern Air Transport’s (FAT, 遠東航空) decision to cease operations, the source added.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS