Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, yesterday urged people to vote against the “corrupt” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in Saturday’s presidential and legislative elections so that Taiwan could gain the respect of other democracies.
“When in power, the DPP always tries to pocket as much as it can, and when elections are near it just bribes media outlets to attack its opponents,” Han told a rally in Keelung.
For the first time in Taiwan’s history, 90 percent of media outlets are only criticizing the opposition parties, instead of keeping the ruling party in check, he said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
“We all know this is an unfair presidential race, as our opponent not only has greater resources, but controls the armed forces as well as cyberarmies,” he said.
Han said that the distribution of resources is “extremely one-sided” between the pan-blue and pan-green camps, and compared running against the DPP to fighting a boxing match against an opponent “armed with an Uzi, a flamethrower, and assisted with satellites and missiles, while having only a nail clipper as a weapon.”
“We do not care how many resources you have — we will just fight you with our eyes closed, because we believe in the people,” he said.
The DPP thinks it can win the elections by having 90 percent of the media outlets attack the KMT’s “dark-skinned, bold, old and ugly presidential candidate,” not realizing it has lost public support, he said.
To put an end to the DPP’s corrupt rule, Taiwanese must vote it out of power, he said.
Doing so would show “all free and democratic countries around the world that Taiwanese can think clearly” and “make them gain respect for us,” he said.
Later yesterday, at a rally in Yilan County with KMT legislative candidate Lu Guo-hwa (呂國華), Han said that, if elected president, he would adopt a series of outward-looking policies that “open up Taiwan to the world.”
As president, he would promote scholarships to fund university students who want to study abroad for a year and encourage foreign universities to establish branches in Taiwan, Han said.
He would also provide scholarships for government employees, including military personnel, public-school teachers and public servants, to study abroad, he said.
Moreover, he said he would launch a Chinese-English bilingual program for all first-grade elementary students and the largest-scale talent fostering program in the nation’s history.
A series of discussions on the legacy of martial law and authoritarianism are to be held at the Taipei International Book Exhibition this month, featuring findings and analysis by the Transitional Justice Commission. The commission and publisher Book Republic organized the series, entitled “Escaping the Nation’s Labyrinth of Memory: What Authoritarian Symbols and Records Can Tell Us,” to help people navigate narratives through textual analysis and comparisons with other nations. The four-day series is to begin on Thursday next week with a discussion between commission Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠), Polish-language translator Lin Wei-yun (林蔚昀), and Polish author and artist Pawel Gorecki comparing
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