The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said it is mulling disciplinary measures against former Kaohsiung County commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) after he accused KMT presidential nominee and Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of being “incompetent and untrustworthy.”
Yang, who had supported Han during his mayoral bid last year, is the second KMT member facing possible loss of party membership for criticizing Han.
On Monday, the KMT New Taipei City chapter passed a decision to revoke the membership of KMT Central Advisory Committee member Chen Hung-chang (陳宏昌) for saying that Han spent most of his time playing mahjong, drinking and womanizing.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang, Taipei Times
The decision is to be reviewed by the KMT Central Disciplinary Committee and Central Standing Committee today for final confirmation.
Yang on Monday also accused Han of frequenting nightclubs, drinking excessively and having extramarital affairs.
Han had admitted to having a pleasure-seeking lifestyle two decades ago and said that he has changed, but some of those behaviors have continued, Yang said on Facebook.
KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) has said that politicians should be wise, competent, trustworthy and kind, but Yang said Han has none of those qualities.
For example, “Han said he does not care about money, but he has not fulfilled his promise during the Nov. 11 [last year] rally in Fongshan District (鳳山) about donating all of his election subsidies to charity,” he said.
Han also owns “luxury mansions” and has many political connections through his wife’s family, Yang said.
Despite having aligned himself with “commoners,” Han should be considered part of the establishment, he added.
It would be better for Han, the KMT and the nation if he focuses on keeping his position as mayor, Yang said.
Asked for comments, Han said he does understand why Yang made the false accusations.
“Since taking office as mayor, I have not gotten drunk and I do not even know what a nightclub looks like,” he told reporters.
He has donated to charity many times, but he never felt the need to advertise it, he said, adding: “I do not want to show all my donation receipts, because that is not the point.”
The KMT should not tolerate slander against its presidential nominee in the period leading up to the presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 11 next year, KMT Central Standing Committee member Yao Chiang-ling (姚江臨) said.
“Yang’s party membership should absolutely be revoked, as with the case of Chen,” he said, adding that he has urged KMT headquarters to revoke Yang’s membership.
The KMT Kaohsiung chapter would gather information related to Yang’s remarks to see if they caused harm to the party or Han, and determine whether to mete out disciplinary measures, chapter head Chuang Chi-wang (莊啟旺) said.
Additional reporting by Lin Liang-sheng and CNA
‘HUMILIATING’: Aletheia University students called on the school to apologize for limiting former professor Chang Liang-tse’s access to its Taiwan literature archive The Aletheia University Student Association yesterday called on the university to apologize to retired professor Chang Liang-tse (張良澤) after it prevented him from accessing the Taiwanese literature archive at its Tainan campus by changing the lock on the building. Last month, the university changed the lock on the building without warning, barring Chang’s access to the archive that he had “singlehandedly established,” Chung Yen-wei (鍾延威), the son of the late writer Chung Chao-cheng (鍾肇政), wrote on Facebook on Friday. The university in 1997 created the first department of Taiwanese literature in the nation, and Chang, now 82, was the department’s first-ever chairman,
ALLEVIATING FEARS: The CECC would only announce public places where it is difficult to identify everyone there at the same time as the couple, minister Chen said The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday announced six places where two locally infected COVID-19 cases had visited between Thursday last week and Sunday, urging people who had been at the places at the same time to monitor their health. The couple, cases 838, a doctor, and 839, his nurse girlfriend, were reported by the center on Tuesday. The doctor had treated a patient with COVID-19 last week before he began suffering symptoms on Friday, while the nurse began suffering symptoms on Saturday. They work in the same hospital in northern Taiwan, but the nurse had not worked with COVID-19 patients, so
SECOND RULING: Israeli-American Oren Shlomo Mayer refused to sign a court transcript, complained about the court translator and said the trial had been unfair The High Court yesterday upheld New Taipei City District Court’s verdicts on four men convicted last year in connection with the 2018 murder and dismemberment of a Canadian citizen on the banks of the Sindian River (新店溪). It found American-Israeli Oren Shlomo Mayer and American Ewart Odane Bent guilty of homicide and the abandonment and destruction of a corpse, with Mayer sentenced to life in prison and Bent given a term of 12 years and six months, for the death of Sanjay Ryan Ramgahan, whose body parts were found in a riverside park under Zhongzheng Bridge in New Taipei’s Yonghe
A lawyer and a prosecutor yesterday castigated what they called a lenient ruling by the High Court on Luo Wen-shan (羅文山), whose prison sentence was reduced to two years, which he does not need to serve, after he was convicted for receiving illegal political donations from China to meddle in Taiwan’s elections. Investigators found that Luo, who retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant general, had accepted NT$8.38 million (US$294,604 at the current exchange rate) under the guise of political contributions from Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference member Xu Zhiming (許智明) and people in Hong Kong from 2008 to
RSS