The Presidential Office yesterday announced that President William Lai (賴清德) would today be embarking on a series of stops across the country to engage with members of the public about 10 issues. He would be doing so to promote unity among Taiwanese, the governing and opposition parties, and the nation, the Presidential Office said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) and Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) were quick to respond to the announcement; the former scoffing at Lai’s call for national unity, accusing him of being the main source of division, the latter saying that Lai’s version of unity “begins with fighting with the opposition.”
The Central Election Commission had announced on Friday that the recall vote for 24 KMT legislators would be held on July 26. Hsu and Lo are among the 24, so it is not surprising that they were the ones to respond so quickly to the announcement of Lai’s tour.
Anyone unaware of how KMT legislators had disported themselves in the legislature over the past 16 months might feel some empathy for them. Suffice to say that it has precisely been their disruptive and divisive approach that caused civil society to initiate a mass recall drive. It speaks volumes that all the genuine — not involving partisan fraud — recall motions have been against KMT legislators, and not against the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The KMT is accusing Lai of being dictatorial, and wants him to intervene and stop the civil actions against its legislators, in the interest of “unity.”
If Lai stepped in and used his power to halt the civil actions, one could only imagine that the KMT would accuse him of being a dictator and quashing democracy.
On Wednesday last week, Lai had arranged a national security briefing, to which he had invited opposition leaders, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌). The invitation had originally been extended during a presidential address on May 20, the anniversary of Lai’s inauguration.
Chu and Huang had expressed interest at the time, but in the days approaching the briefing, they declined to attend, as the format was not to their liking. The decision not to go was not based on the national interest, nor was it a demonstration of leadership. In Huang’s case, it was an expression of his own brand of petulant politics. In Chu’s, it was a strategic misstep.
The TPP does not stand to lose any legislators in this recall movement, as all its current crop are legislators-at-large. However, it would lose considerable influence in the legislature if KMT numbers are reduced.
The KMT could be seriously impacted by the results. Attendance at the national security briefing would have been good optics had Chu wanted to pander to the swing voters. He has chosen to pander instead to his deep-blue base, who revel in his opposition for opposition’s sake.
Support for the central government’s agenda on national security might have reduced some of the voter anger and might have helped the KMT get through the recalls relatively unscathed. The optics of refusal to attend are at least open to a more cynical interpretation, one that already exists in the minds of many Taiwanese: that Chu is more concerned with promoting the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) than Taiwan’s national interest. Somebody ought to tell him that the CCP is very content with the chaos and disunity he is sowing, but is not concerned about whether the recalls sink the KMT.
Eating at a breakfast shop the other day, I turned to an old man sitting at the table next to mine. “Hey, did you hear that the Legislative Yuan passed a bill to give everyone NT$10,000 [US$340]?” I said, pointing to a newspaper headline. The old man cursed, then said: “Yeah, the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] canceled the NT$100 billion subsidy for Taiwan Power Co and announced they would give everyone NT$10,000 instead. “Nice. Now they are saying that if electricity prices go up, we can just use that cash to pay for it,” he said. “I have no time for drivel like
Young supporters of former Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) were detained for posting the names and photographs of judges and prosecutors believed to be overseeing the Core Pacific City redevelopment corruption case. The supporters should be held responsible for their actions. As for Ko’s successor, TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), he should reflect on whether his own comments are provocative and whether his statements might be misunderstood. Huang needs to apologize to the public and the judiciary. In the article, “Why does sorry seem to be the hardest word?” the late political commentator Nan Fang Shuo (南方朔) wrote
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) reportedly told the EU’s top diplomat that China does not want Russia to lose in Ukraine, because the US could shift its focus to countering Beijing. Wang made the comment while meeting with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas on July 2 at the 13th China-EU High-Level Strategic Dialogue in Brussels, the South China Morning Post and CNN reported. Although contrary to China’s claim of neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, such a frank remark suggests Beijing might prefer a protracted war to keep the US from focusing on
There are no obvious connections between the 7-Eleven retail chain in Japan and the Philippines’ national security concerns in the South China Sea. Here is one, one that also takes in Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC), the government of Denmark and Taiwanese plastic surgeons on the way. Japan’s 7-Eleven on Friday last week posted on social media an image of uniforms worn by the chain store’s employees in various locations, including Taiwan, the US, Hawaii, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Cambodia and the Philippines. If this was intended to promote a sense of camaraderie within the 7-Eleven family, it backfired. Taiwan was tagged with the