The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said it is to press charges against a reporter for alleging that the party had sent a representative to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) to discuss appointing a new presidential candidate.
The party is to sue Up Media’s reporter for libel, as his report falsely claimed that KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) had sent former Mainland Affairs Council deputy minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) to the TAO to discuss replacing Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) as the party’s presidential nominee, and to ask Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) to be the party’s backup candidate, KMT Disciplinary Committee director Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) said.
Wu never sent Chang to the TAO to discuss replacing Han, nor did he show the office any poll data about Taiwan’s elections, as the report claimed, Wei said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Wu also never sent Chang to communicate with Gou about replacing Han, he added.
The journalist did not properly verify the information, which “does not match reality at all,” Wei said.
The KMT condemns all fake news and would not rule out pressing charges, KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Cheng Mei-hua (程美華) said.
“Why should the party not press charges when people are saying whatever they want?” Wu told reporters on the sidelines of an Armed Forces Day event.
The party would not choose a new candidate and repeat the same mistake it made three years ago, he said, referring to its replacement of then-candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) with former New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Chu lost to President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party.
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS