President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday denied speculation that his eldest daughter, Lesley Ma (馬唯中), had returned from the US to arrange her wedding.
Ma said that while he did not seek to avoid the media on the matter, it was not necessary to announce his daughter’s personal schedule because she was not a public figure.
“It is enough that there are two public figures in my family,” he said. “We would not and could not hide it if there was a wedding going on.”
Ma made the remarks in Pingtung County yesterday afternoon during a visit to Aboriginal schools and communities.
Yesterday was the first time Ma had taken the presidential aircraft since its exterior was repainted in its original colors. It was compared to a “big frog” and nicknamed the “toothpaste plane” after its bottom was painted green when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was president.
Asked about a planned trip abroad, Ma said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would make the announcement this week.
The ministry has been arranging for Ma to attend the June 1 inauguration of El Salvadoran president-elect Mauricio Funes.
Ma is also likely to visit Panama in July to attend the inauguration of the country’s next president. Central and South America and the Caribbean are Taiwan’s diplomatic strongholds, with many of its 23 diplomatic allies located there.
Ma is also likely to attend a summit meeting between the leaders of Taiwan and its South Pacific allies in August or September in the Solomon Islands.
Meanwhile, Ma dismissed speculation that he had forced Minister without Portfolio Chu Yun-peng (朱雲鵬) to resign, adding that Chu’s character and his family’s expectations were behind the decision.
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) approved Chu’s resignation on Saturday night after Chu admitted he had skipped work to go on dates during office hours.
Ma said that while he was saddened to part with the economist, both he and Liu respected Chu’s decision, Ma said.
Ma said Chu’s case was different from that of National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi’s (蘇起) wife, Chen Yue-ching (陳月卿), because Chen was not a civil servant and she did not violate any rules.
Chen raised eyebrows when she went to China to promote her new book early this month.
She told TV reporters in Beijing that there were no regulations preventing her from traveling.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
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Taiwan was listed in 14th place among the world's wealthiest country in terms of GDP per capita, in the latest rankings released on Monday by Forbes magazine. Taiwan's GDP per capita was US$76,860, which put it at No. 14 on the list of the World's 100 Richest Countries this year, one spot above Hong Kong with US$75,130. The magazine's list of the richest countries in the world is compiled based on GDP per capita data, as estimated by the IMF. However, for a more precise measure of a nation's wealth, the magazine also considers purchasing power parity, which is a metric used to
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