President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday attended the joint graduation ceremony for all eight academies of the armed forces at the Republic of China (ROC) Military Academy in Kaohsiung and presented the graduates with their commissions.
Lai in his speech said he hoped the graduates would innovate the military, bolster national defense and aim to achieve peace while upholding national sovereignty.
With the growing threat of authoritarianism, graduating officers, who would grow and mature into the military’s leadership, should be mindful of global affairs developments and possess the capability to infer trends from minute details to lead the military in safeguarding the nation, Lai said.
Photo : Lee Hui-chou, Taipei Times
The military must observe strict discipline and live by the tenets that the military is for country, responsibility and honor, to keep up the morale of the troops, be fearless and become a solid foundation for the defense of the nation, Lai said.
The military should staunchly defend the nation’s sovereignty, he added.
History has proven that countries that invade others would ultimately fail, and victory would go to those who band together to defend their countries, and work with free and democratic partners, Lai said, adding that the military must work to resist communism, infiltration and being taken over.
The military cannot rest during peace and must continue to be on high alert, working to improve its capabilities, he said.
Lai encouraged students to keep up with the times, in terms of technologies and mindset, to ensure that the military is progressive and modern, adding that the government has been rolling out national defense reforms that would enable the public to stand together with the military in times of need.
Separately, the military graduates’ representatives this year featured Tu Hsuan-chen (杜宣臣), one of the first indigenous people to study and graduate from the US Military Academy West Point; Lin Le-kuan (林樂觀), the first female officer to graduate from the US Air Force Academy; an Eswatini national studying and graduating from the ROC Military Academy this year; Cheng Yu-ting (程鈺婷), the first brigade commander-in-training from the National Defense University’s Chung Cheng Institute of Technology; and Lin Pei-hua (林姵鏵), the first graduate student from the Naval Academy’s Department of Applied Foreign Languages.
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