The national solidarity that President William Lai (賴清德) is calling for is to purge people who are not pro-Taiwanese independence, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday at the KMT’s Central Standing Committee.
Lai on Tuesday delivered a talk at the Taoyuan Hakka Youth Association, the second of a series of 10, and said that Taiwanese supported democracy, and their votes, through elections and recalls, express “steel-willed determination” to protect Taiwan’s democracy.
That force that is not only expressed in the government, but also within the legislature, he said.
Photo: CNA
“Hammer after hammer, tempered into steel and removed of all impurities, until all that’s left is steel-willed determination to defend our sovereignty and safeguard our democracy,” he said.
Chu said that Lai, like totalitarian governments, is in favor of purging members of the opposition and likens the process to forging steel, in which one must purge the impurities from iron.
The majority of Taiwanese have already been deemed to be “the others” and impure, Chu said, referring to the removal of “Han Chinese” as an ethnic group from the Executive Yuan’s Web site on March 24 and defining the ethnic group as “the rest of the population.”
Lai is purging his and his party’s opponents under the guise of democracy, he said.
Lai’s use of Hoklo, commonly called Taiwanese, in front of Hakka people, and asking whether they understood, is an attempt to create a Hoklo-only society, Chu said.
Hakka people are also Taiwanese, and the Hakka language is also a Taiwanese language, he said.
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) of the KMT said unity should be about tolerance and moving forward, rather than treating lawmakers as “impurities” that needed to be “hammered out.”
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said that all Taiwanese should be the masters of the nation, not “impurities,” adding that Lai’s comments were chilling and did not sound like the head of a democratic country.
Lai should clarify what impurities he wished to eliminate, and why he sees Taiwanese this way, Huang said.
The TPP cannot accept the president’s attempt to divide the country under the guise of promoting national unity, TPP spokeswoman Celina Wu (吳怡萱) said.
Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said this was not the first time Lai used the analogy, citing a 2019 speech.
Politicians should not overinterpret the president’s speech and not distort his intended message of solidarity, she said.
The president in his speech said that the desire to protect democracy is the most significant consensus among supporters of the Republic of China and those who back independence, she said.
The Taipei Summer Festival is to begin tomorrow at Dadaocheng Wharf (大稻埕), featuring four themed firework shows and five live music performances throughout the month, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said today. The festival in the city’s Datong District (大同) is to run until Aug. 30, holding firework displays on Wednesdays and the final Saturday of the event. The first show is scheduled for tomorrow, followed by Aug. 13, 20 and 30. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Disney Pixar's movie Toy Story, the festival has partnered with Walt Disney Co (Taiwan) to host a special themed area on
Aftershocks from a magnitude 6.2 earthquake that struck off Yilan County at 3:45pm yesterday could reach a magnitude of 5 to 5.5, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Seismological Center technical officer Chiu Chun-ta (邱俊達) told a news conference that the epicenter of the temblor was more than 100km from Taiwan. Although predicted to measure between magnitude 5 and 5.5, the aftershocks would reach an intensity of 1 on Taiwan’s 7-tier scale, which gauges the actual effect of an earthquake, he said. The earthquake lasted longer in Taipei because the city is in a basin, he said. The quake’s epicenter was about 128.9km east-southeast
BE CAREFUL: The virus rarely causes severe illness or death, but newborns, older people and those with medical conditions are at risk of more severe illness As more than 7,000 cases of chikungunya fever have been reported in China’s Guangdong Province this year, including 2,892 new cases last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday said it is monitoring the situation and considering raising the travel notice level, which might be announced today. The CDC issued a level 1 travel notice, or “watch,” for Guangdong Province on July 22, citing an outbreak in Foshan, a manufacturing hub in the south of the province, that was reported early last month. Between July 27 and Saturday, the province reported 2,892 new cases of chikungunya, reaching a total of 7,716
STAY VIGILANT: People should reduce the risk of chronic liver inflammation by avoiding excessive alcohol consumption, smoking and eating pickled foods, the physician said A doctor last week urged people to look for five key warning signs of acute liver failure after popular producer-turned-entertainer Shen Yu-lin (沈玉琳) was reportedly admitted to an intensive care unit for fulminant hepatitis. Fulminant hepatitis is the rapid and massive death of liver cells, impairing the organ’s detoxification, metabolic, protein synthesis and bile production functions, which if left untreated has a mortality rate as high as 80 percent, according to the Web site of Advancing Clinical Treatment of Liver Disease, an international organization focused on liver disease prevention and treatment. People with hepatitis B or C are at higher risk of
RSS