Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) officials and legislative candidates yesterday urged voters to cast their ballots for President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and reject Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, as supporting Han is tantamount to supporting support China.
The Chinese government has meddled in the election by providing money for several small political parties, they said.
“Tsai and the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] have moved to the middle ground, in upholding the Republic of China [ROC]-Taiwan framework, and only the TSU advocates scrapping the ROC and establishing the Taiwan nation,” said Billy Pan (潘建志), first of the TSU’s list of legislators-at-large nominee.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
Taiwanese must reject all the pro-China parties in tomorrow’s elections, including the KMT, the New Party and the People First Party (PFP), and get rid of Han, he said.
The judiciary must investigate the finances of New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (郁慕明) and New Party at-large nominee Chiu Yi (邱毅), Pan said.
“We have received reports from people that Yok and Chiu have money flowing into their accounts from China. This should be investigated under the recently passed Anti-infiltration Act (反滲透法). I am sure they will be found guilty, with clear evidence of violating the act, which will land them both in prison,” Pan said.
Former TSU legislator Chou Ni-an (周倪安) said Taiwanese have a distinct cultural and national identity apart from China and are opposed to becoming part of China
“Yok and Chiu’s New Party are advocating for ‘one country, two systems’ model for fast tracking unification with China. This is pushing us into the fire pit, making Taiwanese like Tibetans, Uighurs and Hong Kongers, who are under the oppressive rule of a Chinese dictatorship,” she said.
The TSU needs the support of Taiwanese voters in this election so that such a staunch pro-Taiwan party will not lose to the pro-China New Party, she added.
If the TSU does not improve its showing over the 2018 election, it might have to fold, Chou said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift