The performance of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration over the past four years has been acceptable, but many issues remain, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said yesterday during a Pop Radio interview.
Commenting on pro-Taiwan independence groups urging Tsai to omit reference to the “Republic of China” (ROC) during her inaugural address on Wednesday next week, Chiang said that everyone is free to their own political opinion, but changing the name of the nation requires following democratic procedures.
He does not endorse those views, but Tsai’s address would likely use both ROC and Taiwan to refer to the nation, he said.
“If she did [comply with the demands of those groups], she should not be the president, as she was elected the president of the ROC,” Chiang said.
As for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Shih-ying’s (蔡適應) proposal to remove references to “the unification of the nation” from the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), Chiang said that the ruling party must observe the principles of democratic rule and be responsible in taking action on the issue.
The DPP has nothing to show for its efforts on such issues such as changing the name of the nation on passports or the name of China Airlines aside from making false accusations against the KMT, he said.
The KMT thinks Tsai Shih-ying should clarify his reasoning for such a change and then the KMT would announce its position on the issue, he said.
Although Tsai Ing-wen’s re-election appeared to show that the public supported her performance during her first-term, her vote tally was not so high when considering issues such as youth wages, labor and judicial reform, he said.
“The KMT will remind people of the problems Tsai’s administration has not solved,” he said.
Although international support for Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA) is at an all-time high, the US has not made an official appeal to the WHO, showing that it places its relationship with China above Taiwan, he said.
Taiwan’s apparent exclusion from next week’s WHA meeting — and its inability to stage a protest given that the meeting is held remotely this year — is a far cry from former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) terms in office, during which Taiwan took part in the WHA’s annual meetings as an observer from 2009 to 2016, Chiang said.
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