Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) yesterday said that pan-green camp politicians would not be excluded from his coalition government if he is elected.
Ko was responding to an appeal by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice presidential candidate and Broadcasting Corp of China chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) to renounce all cooperation with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) if he becomes president.
KMT presidential candidate Hou You-yi’s (侯友宜) campaign urged Ko to vow to never form a coalition with the DPP in the Legislative Yuan or appoint its members.
Photo: CNA
“I do not understand this logic behind their excluding everyone else from government as soon as they get power,” Ko told reporters on the sidelines of door-to-door campaign in New Taipei City.
In response to a request to comment on a new KMT ad saying that a vote for Hou is a vote for Ko, he said that “voting for me straight-up will do. There is no need to do it in a roundabout way.”
Regarding former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) comment that Taiwan must trust Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in cross-strait affairs and reduce military spending, Ko said that he supports raising defense-related expenditures to 3 percent of the nation’s GDP.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan must be confident in the strength of its self-defense capabilities and have solid relations with its friends and allies before attempting to enter into dialogue with Beijing, he said.
“Nobody gets into this kind of thing by trusting the other side from the very beginning,” he added.
Separately, DPP spokesman Chang Chih-hao (張志豪) yesterday called a statement from Ko campaign’s policy on indigenous people “arrogant and ignorant,” adding that the candidate has a history of discrimination against women and less-fortunate people.
A report from the independent news outlet wuo-wuo.com cited the Ko campaign as saying the candidate would protect endangered species by “educating indigenous people to change their religion and hunting lifestyle.”
Chang said Ko has shown a lack of respect for indigenous cultures on many occasions and accused indigenous Taiwanese of “whining about nothing” at last year’s Indigenous Youth Forum.
TPP Legislator Cynthia Wu (吳欣盈), Ko’s running mate, was seen smiling and nodding when a supporter complained that there were too many indigenous people in Hualien and that the supporter was scared of them, he said.
“Ko’s consistent arrogance and ignorance revealed that he does not have the temperament and character to be a presidential candidate,” Chang said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
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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