Next year’s presidential and legislative elections offer a choice between war and peace, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday.
“Vote for the KMT [Chinese Nationalist Party], and there will be no battlefield across the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
Speaking at a flag-raising ceremony hosted by the KMT at its headquarters, Ma said the “resist China, protect Taiwan” policy promoted by the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) administration over the past six years had caused an unprecedented increase in cross-strait tensions.
Photo: Hu Shun-hsiang, Taipei Times
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) cross-strait policy is out of tune with public opinion and has lost public support, said Ma, who served as president from 2008 to 2016.
Taiwan should not only prepare for war, but also avoid war, he said.
Avoiding war means not being provocative, and as a gesture to that end, Taiwan should reopen the “small three links” as soon as possible to ensure national secutiry along with the well-being of Taiwanese, he said.
The “small three links” refer to direct trade, postal and transport services between China and the Taiwanese outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu. The links were initiated on Jan. 1, 2001, but were suspended in February 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regarding Tsai’s restoration of one-year mandatory military service for young men, Ma said: “Vote for the DPP, youth go to the battlefield. Vote for the KMT, there will be no battlefield on either side of the strait.”
Ma credited KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) for substantial gains in the mayoral and councilor elections on Nov. 26. The KMT won 14 of the 22 city and county leadership posts being contested.
With morale bolstered within the KMT, Ma said the party should work toward victory in the Taipei and Nantou legislative by-elections later this month and in March respectively, as well as the presidential and legislative elections next year.
Addressing the ceremony, Chu said that the KMT is determined to win the legislative by-elections and nominate strong candidates for the national elections.
The KMT must “walk the right path and select the right people” to run in next year’s elections, and must be “selfless and united” to achieve its goals, he added.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS