The majority of Taiwanese are against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s decisions to remove souvenirs bearing Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) likeness from stores at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall in Taipei, to close the memorial on the anniversary of the 228 Incident or to remove statues of Chiang, a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-commissioned poll released yesterday showed.
A poll conducted for the party by the TrendGo Survey Research Co found that 60.4 percent of respondents said they did not approve of the government’s removing statues of Chiang around the nation or products carrying his likeness from the memorial on the grounds that “Chiang had been an authoritarian ruler,” the party said.
Only 17.7 percent of respondents supported the moves, while 21.8 percent had no opinion, the KMT said.
Photo: Chen Yi-chuan, Taipei Times
The government has been ignoring vital issues concerning the economy to focus on political feuds and ideological wars in the name of transitional justice, the KMT said.
“The KMT calls on President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to desist while she is still able to do so and not to trample on the public’s trust,” the KMT said.
“Chiang was not a murderer, nor was he the mastermind of the 228 Incident, but the principal warrior that safeguarded Taiwan,” the party said.
The 228 Incident refers to a crackdown launched by the then-KMT regime following demonstrations that followed an incident in Taipei on Feb. 27, 1947.
The Incident marked the beginning of the White Terror era, during which thousands of Taiwanese were arrested, imprisoned and/or executed.
Asked if the DPP government’s policies on undertaking transitional justice were “manufacturing social conflicts and opposition,” 51.6 percent of the respondents said yes, while about 31.5 percent said that they would promote social conciliation and solidarity and 17 percent had no response.
“The KMT supports the idea of ‘restoring historical truth,’ but facts must be respected and the historical context and processes should be taken into serious account rather than launching political vendettas against deceased figures,” the KMT said.
“It is a convention that achievements and misdeeds [of political figures] are determined by historians and the public. The DPP’s transitional justice aims to manufacture conflicts and violates the basic requirements and logic of true transitional justice,” the KMT said.
The poll collected 1,101 samples and has a margin of error of 2.95 percentage points.
921 EARTHQUAKE: The magnitude 7.3 quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged The Central Weather Bureau yesterday received about 50,000 views on Facebook after it posted the data that it collected on Sept. 21, 1999, when the nation was devastated by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. The data showed that the 921 Earthquake hit the nation at 1:47am, with the epicenter being 7km southwest of the bureau’s quake detection center in Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池) at a depth of 8km. The quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged, with the cost of the damage estimated at NT$300 billion (US$10.8 billion at the current
British newspaper The Mail on Sunday reported that Prince Charles met with Bruno Wang (汪家興), a Taiwanese fugitive who describes himself as a Chinese philanthropist and donated ￡500,000 (US$683,522) to the prince’s charity, the Prince’s Foundation. The newspaper reported that Wang is wanted in Taiwan on charges related to money laundering and being a fugitive from justice, allegations he denies, and drew comparisons between Wang and the Russian banker Dmitry Leus. Investigation and cooperation with foreign authorities have found that Bruno Wang’s father, Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), had stashed proceeds from a scandal involving the procurement of Lafayette frigates in 61 bank accounts,
AT ODDS: The KMT called on the government to seek bilateral dialogue with Beijing to resolve the issue that led to the ban on custard apple and wax apple imports Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials and lawmakers yesterday condemned China’s sudden ban on imports of custard apples and wax apples from Taiwan as “obvious political retaliation,” while the opposition called for a scientific investigation into Beijing’s claim to have found pests in imports of the fruits. China earlier yesterday announced a ban on the importation of the two fruits from today, citing repeated discoveries of Planococcus minor, a type of mealybug. The announcement follows a similar ban on Taiwanese pineapples imposed in February. At least Beijing gave a few days’ notice when it banned pineapple imports, an unnamed government official said yesterday. This time
BY OTHER MEANS: China could see CPTPP membership as a means of circumventing trade restrictions imposed by the US, amid an ongoing trade dispute between them The US could invoke a clause in its trade agreement with Canada and Mexico to block China’s application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a government official said yesterday. Under Article 32.10 of the Exceptions and General Provisions of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), if either Canada or Mexico enter a free-trade agreement with a nonmarket economy — such as China — the US could withdraw from the agreement. “If that clause applies to multilateral free-trade agreements such as the CPTPP — which Mexico and Canada are members of — that might be cause for the two
RSS