While world leaders have condemned the storming of the US Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, the silence from President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) is cause for concern, former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) office said yesterday.
The US is Taiwan’s most important ally and the Tsai administration prides itself for maintaining good Taiwan-US relations, as well as being vocal in its support for democracy advocacy movements in Hong Kong, the office said in a statement.
Aside from a brief mention of “regretting the incident” by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Tsai administration has been silent on the incident, which trampled the principles of democracy, the office said.
This might cause the administration of US president-elect Joe Biden to entertain the thought that Tsai, if she does not support the violence outright, at least condones it, the office said.
Heads of state around the world condemned the act, because no government that embraces the principles of a democratic system of government and the rule of law would condone a government building being overrun by violence, it said.
Regardless of their platform, no group should exceed the boundaries of the law, it said.
The office said that the united stance of politicians across party lines in the US to condemn the intrusion into the Capitol was in stark contrast to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whose members openly supported a takeover of the legislature in Taipei in 2014.
In the Sunflower movement, a student-led group protesting the abrupt passage of a cross-strait service trade agreement occupied the Legislative Yuan’s main chamber for 23 days.
It needs to be asked why the DPP’s definition of democracy and the rule of law seems to differ greatly from that of the rest of the world, the office said.
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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