Taipei mayoral election campaigns have been clouded by issues concerning Taiwan’s COVID-19 response and vaccine procurement over the past two years.
As Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) was head of the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) for more than 900 days during the COVID-19 pandemic, his political opponents have been attacking him for what they called “poor COVID-19 responses.”
The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Legislator and Taipei mayoral candidate Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) and independent Taipei mayoral candidate Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), a former Taipei deputy mayor, have aggressively and negatively campaigned against Chen.
Since Chen announced his bid for mayor in July, he has been called a “runaway CECC head,” criticized for cutting quarantine time and causing local COVID-19 outbreaks, branded incapable of securing enough vaccines last year, and accused of blocking vaccine purchases, concealing vaccine prices and wasting taxpayer money by disposing of expired vaccines.
Huang said that Chen was “murdering for money,” as she claimed the government had blocked the purchase of imported vaccines to profit from Taiwan’s homegrown Medigen COVID-19 vaccine.
Chiang also said Chen showed “disregard for human lives” and “had no empathy for the victims’ families,” while the KMT legislative caucus last week filed a complaint against him for alleged dereliction of duty in purchasing COVID-19 vaccines.
When the local outbreak of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 began in April, the KMT consistently called for Chen to step down as CECC head due to his “poor COVID-19 response,” but it criticized him for “running away” when he resigned in July after the infections stabilized. Daily local caseloads dropped to about 20,000 from the peak of about 90,000, while antiviral drug prescriptions and COVID-19 hospital bed vacancy rates were high.
The KMT legislative caucus in July 2020 urged the government to allocate more funding for domestic COVID-19 vaccine development and ease clinical trial requirements due to fears that the nation would not gain access to vaccine supplies as fast as other countries. After the government purchased vaccines, the KMT later labeled the AstraZeneca vaccine “unwanted” and dangerous, saying it could cause blood clots. It called receivers of the Medigen vaccine “lab rats,” demanded a greater supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and questioned whether vaccines had been purchased at inflated prices.
The KMT’s demands — buying vaccines before other countries at low cost, providing vaccine brand variety, revealing non-disclosure agreements, not wasting taxpayers’ money by purchasing too many doses, while also funding research for domestically made vaccines — are basically impossible.
In January last year, Israel was ahead of many bigger countries in COVID-19 vaccination rates. It paid a premium to get early Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, agreeing to provide the vaccine company with efficacy data among those vaccinated. Although its contract with Pfizer was made public shortly after it was signed, the specifics around the cost were redacted.
Pfizer-BioNTech had stated that it uses “a tiered pricing formula based on volume and delivery dates,” and the CECC has clarified that a non-disclosure agreement was signed with the vaccine manufacturers, yet the KMT continues to obscure the facts.
While many countries have reported destroying millions of expired COVID-19 vaccines, including the US, which discarded 82.1 million doses from December 2020 to mid-May, the KMT continues to attack Chen for the disposal of Taiwan’s expired vaccines.
Negative campaigning focused on previous COVID-19 policies does not improve the well-being of Taipei residents. Debates on policies for better municipal governance would be more constructive.
China badly misread Japan. It sought to intimidate Tokyo into silence on Taiwan. Instead, it has achieved the opposite by hardening Japanese resolve. By trying to bludgeon a major power like Japan into accepting its “red lines” — above all on Taiwan — China laid bare the raw coercive logic of compellence now driving its foreign policy toward Asian states. From the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China Seas to the Himalayan frontier, Beijing has increasingly relied on economic warfare, diplomatic intimidation and military pressure to bend neighbors to its will. Confident in its growing power, China appeared to believe
After more than three weeks since the Honduran elections took place, its National Electoral Council finally certified the new president of Honduras. During the campaign, the two leading contenders, Nasry Asfura and Salvador Nasralla, who according to the council were separated by 27,026 votes in the final tally, promised to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan if elected. Nasralla refused to accept the result and said that he would challenge all the irregularities in court. However, with formal recognition from the US and rapid acknowledgment from key regional governments, including Argentina and Panama, a reversal of the results appears institutionally and politically
In 2009, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) made a welcome move to offer in-house contracts to all outsourced employees. It was a step forward for labor relations and the enterprise facing long-standing issues around outsourcing. TSMC founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) once said: “Anything that goes against basic values and principles must be reformed regardless of the cost — on this, there can be no compromise.” The quote is a testament to a core belief of the company’s culture: Injustices must be faced head-on and set right. If TSMC can be clear on its convictions, then should the Ministry of Education
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) provided several reasons for military drills it conducted in five zones around Taiwan on Monday and yesterday. The first was as a warning to “Taiwanese independence forces” to cease and desist. This is a consistent line from the Chinese authorities. The second was that the drills were aimed at “deterrence” of outside military intervention. Monday’s announcement of the drills was the first time that Beijing has publicly used the second reason for conducting such drills. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is clearly rattled by “external forces” apparently consolidating around an intention to intervene. The targets of
RSS