Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) yesterday said that he hopes the party’s Institute of Revolutionary Practice could become an “important cradle” for attracting and cultivating party talent.
“Although the KMT is poor, it cannot be poor in the area of cultivating talent because talent and discourse are the KMT’s most important assets in the future,” Chiang said at a news conference at the party’s Taipei headquarters to mark Taipei City Councilor Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) taking over as the institute’s new director, along with deputy directors Yu Shu-hui (游淑慧) and Huang Chien-hao (黃健豪).
The party must show the public through action, not just words, that it wants to develop new talent, he added.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Lo outlined his three major policies for the institute, which has reverted to its original name from the National Development Institute.
He said that he would not take a salary for being its director, although Chiang had told him that the job was an “obligatory post” that came without pay when he offered it to him.
“The KMT is at a historic low point,” Lo said. “The institute has no money and neither does the KMT.”
Lo said he would keep the promise that he made on Jan. 12, the day after the presidential and legislative elections, to donate NT$800,000 (US$26,532) to the KMT’s youth development work once a new party chairperson was elected.
The donation would be made to the institute to help pay its expenses, he said.
Furthermore, the institute is to launch a NT$10 million fundraising drive, he said, adding that details would be released as soon as possible.
While NT$10 million is a small sum for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whose resources are “endless,” it is an “astronomical amount” for the KMT, he added.
For decades the KMT had a reputation as one of the wealthiest political parties in the world.
In July 2018, Ministry of Interior data showed that the KMT had assets totaling NT$18.9 billion (US$626.82 million), while the DPP had assets worth NT$769 million, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported.
However, on Dec. 6 last year, the KMT said it was struggling to pay staff, due to an asset freeze imposed by the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee.
The committee said that the KMT had income of NT$420 million in 2018 that had not been frozen.
Additional reporting by staff writer
NATURE TAKES ITS COURSE: The agency’s head said he felt a sense of loss watching red-banded snakes eat the babies, as they had decided on non-intervention The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday released a documentary on a hundred-pace viper that had incubated 16 eggs, all of which hatched, but only a baby viper escaped after they were attacked by red-banded snakes. The agency’s Taichung branch last year launched the viper reproduction monitoring project soon after forest rangers Lin Chun-yu (林俊佑) and Chou Chia-cheng (周家成) spotted a pregnant hundred-pace viper in a grass-covered burrow near a parking lot in Tbulan Village (松鶴部落). The Atayal village, in Taichung’s Heping District (和平), is headed by Ecyang Yapu, who was positive about the project and assisted in access control and power
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said that it had deployed vessels to “monitor” Chinese ships operating in waters off the east coast. The CGA said it dispatched vessels in response to a China Coast Guard announcement that it had carried out another “routine law-enforcement patrol” in waters off the east coast. “The CGA firmly rejects China’s cognitive warfare campaign of ‘law enforcement in name, jurisdictional expansion in practice,’” it said on X. As of 11am yesterday, two China Coast Guard ships were “loitering and drifting” about 105 nautical miles (195km) and 74 nautical miles east of Green Island (綠島) respectively, it said. It
A sharp rise in compensation to be paid by air force officers who leave before completing their required service could indicate an increase in pilots leaving the military early, an analyst said on Friday, warning that the trend could worsen a shortage of experienced personnel. Chieh Chung (揭仲), a researcher at the Association for Strategic Foresight, issued the warning even though the number of volunteer military personnel is expected to increase next year. The planned headcount for volunteer military personnel, covering officers, noncommissioned officers (NCO) and enlisted soldiers, is 158,223 for next year, up 4,258 from 153,965 this year, Chieh said. The increase
Potential improvements to munitions used by China’s long-range rocket-artillery units could extend their range to cover the entire Miyako Strait, which might give the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) the ability to secure the strategic waterway, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said in a report. The PLA’s long-range rocket-artillery units deployed along the Taiwan Strait are concentrated along the coast of Fujian Province, including Changle, Pingtan and Shishi, the quarterly report on China said. The artillery brigades of the PLA’s 71st, 72nd and 73rd group armies have been deployed, with preparations for potential battlefield operations under way since August 2022, the report
RSS