When Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate, announced on Tuesday that he would take a three-month leave of absence to concentrate on his campaign, he sang a military song called I Am Going to War Now.
His announcement has left critics wondering whether the military campaign metaphor is accurate.
Political commentator Huang Chuang-hsia (黃創夏) asked whether Han’s “long march” was like going on a campaign or if it was closer to going AWOL.
Han is calling his campaign his “listening tour” of Taiwan. If anyone had decried the mayor’s presidential ambitions as an abrogation of responsibility to the residents of Kaohsiung, they must be doubly troubled by this latest news.
In the short time that he has been mayor, Han has been criticized for his absences from Kaohsiung City Hall. In many cases these have been tied to his presidential ambitions, even before he had announced his intention to join the KMT’s presidential primary. His visit to the US, in particular, had nothing whatsoever to do with his responsibilities as mayor.
Han last year outlined a glowing vision of economic regeneration for Kaohsiung’s residents during his mayoral campaign. At the very least they deserve his undivided attention now.
To add insult to injury, the mayor, speaking to the media on the first day of his long march, called on President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to follow suit and take a break from the presidency during the campaign.
This way, the two of them could campaign as equals, in what he called a “fight between gentlemen,” without her having the full power of the state behind her, he said.
In other words, he wants the president to take a leave of absence to be fairer to him.
There are two broad interpretations of this call: The first is that he meant it. This would certainly be consistent with what seems to be his idea of governance, that it is acceptable for a leader to put their duty on hold to cater to a changing situation more advantageous to them.
The second is that Han was mocking Tsai. Neither interpretation reflects well on a man who aspires to be the president.
Tsai, of course, is to continue to attend to her presidential duties and campaign at the same time, as is the normal procedure.
Han is talking nonsense. It is an obvious diversionary, obfuscating tactic, suggesting that he, too, is aware of the dubious reasoning for his “listening tour” and of how unfair he is being to the residents of Kaohsiung.
If Han wants to be president, he should quit his job, not hedge his bets. If he wins, the people of Kaohsiung lose. If he loses, they lose, too.
New Power Party Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday said that Han was making the same mistake that then-New Taipei City mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) made in 2016 as the KMT’s presidential candidate.
If politicians did not have the self-awareness and self-discipline to know that it is not appropriate to campaign for the presidency when they have just started in an elected position, then there should be legislation to prevent them from doing so, Huang said.
Such regulation would apply to all potential candidates, which would introduce consistency and fairness into the system.
It is as difficult to argue with that logic as it is easy to argue with Han’s.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
With the manipulations of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), it is no surprise that this year’s budget plan would make government operations difficult. The KMT and the TPP passing malicious legislation in the past year has caused public ire to accumulate, with the pressure about to erupt like a volcano. Civic groups have successively backed recall petition drives and public consensus has reached a fever-pitch, with no let up during the long Lunar New Year holiday. The ire has even breached the mindsets of former staunch KMT and TPP supporters. Most Taiwanese have vowed to use
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
About 6.1 million couples tied the knot last year, down from 7.28 million in 2023 — a drop of more than 20 percent, data from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs showed. That is more serious than the precipitous drop of 12.2 percent in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the saying goes, a single leaf reveals an entire autumn. The decline in marriages reveals problems in China’s economic development, painting a dismal picture of the nation’s future. A giant question mark hangs over economic data that Beijing releases due to a lack of clarity, freedom of the press
RSS