Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Wednesday called on Vice President William Lai (賴清德) to clarify his stance on Taiwanese independence, which Ko said has left many confused.
On an online program that aired on Wednesday, Ko was asked by host Frances Huang (黃光芹) to comment on his recent remarks that Lai, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential candidate, had gone from a “princeling” thriving on support for Taiwanese independence to a timid “weakling.”
The US has openly stated its opposition to Taiwan making any moves toward independence, and Lai should openly say whether he intends to pursue the cause he has long championed, Ko said online on Friday last week.
Photo: Taipei Times file
The former Taipei mayor repeated that narrative on Huang’s show.
“[Former DPP chairperson and pro-democracy movement activist] Huang Hsin-chieh (黃信介) said pushing for Taiwan independence is something you do, not something you speak of, but Lai has neither done nor spoken of it,” Ko said.
Lai has declined media requests to reply to Ko’s statements, saying he would not respond to “personal attacks.”
Ko said it was fine that Lai did not want to respond, but that he must respond to people’s questions.
Considering the pressure from the US and China, maintaining the “status quo” when it came to cross-strait relations was a Hobson’s choice, Ko said.
Lai might as well be honest and say Taiwan independence is “not viable for the time being,” Ko said.
Asked by Frances Huang to clarify his remark during a TV interview that he was “deep-green at heart” — a narrative the program host said was likely a “campaign tactic” — Ko said that his grandfather, Ko Shih-yuan (柯世元), was a victim of the 228 Massacre explains why he “started out as green,” meaning he supported the DPP and its values.
“Am I supposed to deny my own history?” Ko asked.
The 228 Massacre refers to a brutal crackdown on protesters by the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration in 1947 that stemmed from a government investigator’s inappropriate handling of an unlicensed tobacco vendor. There is a great discrepancy in the estimated death toll of the incident, ranging from 1,000 to more than 20,000 people.
Asked to clarify his recent remarks that he would follow President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) foreign affairs policy, Ko said he learned from his visit to the US in April that the country “thinks highly of Tsai’s performance.”
He assured US officials he met during the visit that if elected, he would handle Taiwan-US relations on the existing framework and predicted that there would be no change to the relationship, no matter who wins the presidential election, Ko said.
“It’s Tsai’s cross-strait and internal policies we oppose,” he said.
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