Thanks for nothing, Mr Ma
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is the most pretentious of all presidents in the world. It is clear that he has no interest in Taiwan’s sovereignty, as he has shown throughout the preparations for the World Games. He showed no interest until he decided to attend the Games two days before the opening ceremony.
Sovereignty is what we could find in the opening ceremony of the Games through its amazing performances that all related to Taiwan’s culture.
Due to the government’s shameless cut to the budget for the World Games, students and local dancers were hired to perform at the opening ceremony with all their heart. The various Taiwanese teams in the World Games also received little or no support from the government, but have performed amazingly, even winning gold medals.
Yet when he decided to appear at the World Games just days before the opening ceremony, Ma had the cheek to say that the Games show that ties with China have improved.
This is an inappropriate remark. Former Kaohsiung mayor Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) applied for the World Games and succeeded in bringing them to his city. China tried to sabotage Taiwan’s effort.
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) took over after Hsieh and made this the best show Taiwan has ever performed on the world stage — and the best show Taiwan has performed to show its position as a unique and independent country.
Meanwhile, Ma has embarrassed himself by recording an online speech in advance and lying about his knowledge about computers before his graduation in 1972.
Ma has also restored former dictator Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) name to the memorial hall in Taipei, even as the public celebrates Taiwan’s sovereignty through the World Games. Ma ought to be ashamed of himself for choosing this timing to restore the name of the memorial.
More examples of Ma’s uninterest in Taiwan’s sovereignty can be found in the news every day. His actions would be considered scandalous abroad, but not so in Taiwan.
As long as Ma is president, it will be a shame for this country and a shame for the world to see such a puppet of China pretending to govern.
ALEX RAYMOND
Niaosong,
Kaohsiung County
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number