Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday each declined to attend President William Lai’s (賴清德) proposed national security briefing today.
Lai in his inauguration anniversary address on May 20 proposed holding the briefing.
The TPP yesterday morning said in a statement that Huang would not be attending, calling the meeting hasty and rash, and that it reeked of political manipulation.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
The party said it initially welcomed the invitation for a sincere exchange of opinions on national affairs, but added that it had not received any update on the meeting from the Presidential Office for more than two weeks.
When the TPP received a notification of the meeting, it learned that the meeting would be limited to a briefing on national security affairs, which the party said was not what the president promised.
The Presidential Office did not adequately communicate with the TPP over the meeting, while much of the information it received about the briefing was through the media, it said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Discussions of national security affairs or classified information should observe the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), and should not be held at the will of one person above the law, the party said.
The TPP also urged Lai to remove National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), alleging that he was a national security liability, after his former aide while foreign affairs minister, Ho Jen-chieh (何仁傑), was charged with spying for China.
Yesterday afternoon, Chu also announced he would not attend the briefing, but added that he hopes the secretaries-general of the KMT and the TPP would continue to work with the Presidential Office on the possibility of similar events.
The KMT has always sought dialogue between the ruling and opposition parties, Chu said, adding that such talks should be geared toward the resolution of problems faced by Taiwanese.
The KMT believes the ruling and opposition parties need not have an adversarial relationship, he said.
Lai is the critical link to realizing that goal, he said, urging the president to improve relations between the parties.
Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said that the office thanked the KMT for its efforts and willingness to continue talks, and that the office would strive to create a platform for dialogue.
Additional reporting by Chen Yun
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS