Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) fired another salvo at the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday, comparing calls for party unity to strategies adopted by Adolf Hitler and Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石).
Underscoring an ongoing spat between Lu and DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) over the party primaries, Lu said the DPP needed to seriously address member dissatisfaction rather than provide “empty slogans.”
“The [DPP] should not just keep yelling empty phrases about ‘unity’... and not face up to [its] problems,” she said, ostensibly in reference to Tsai’s remarks to the DPP caucus on Monday.
“Hitler and Chiang Kai-shek loved yelling ‘unity.’ Should we be like [them]?” she said.
Asked whether she supported Tsai as party leader, Lu said there was no need for her to do so.
“I am in the same boat with Taiwanese,” she added.
Her comments, the most serious accusation so far against the party where she serves as a central executive committee member, come amid deepening divisions within the DPP one month before it settles on a presidential nominee.
The break between Lu and Tsai comes despite calls by Lu to hundreds of party supporters on Sunday to “never give up on the DPP.”
The event, which drew about 400 party supporters, was organized by DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) and other members of the “Kung Ma,” or “elder,” faction. A petition calling for Tsai’s resignation was circulated at the event, but did not gain serious traction.
Lu said Tsai’s absence at the event was a sign of disrespect to party members, who she said were fuming after the DPP congress decided to drop a party member vote in the legislative and presidential primaries.
“It would have been good even if she’d shown up just for a little while. Had she done this and shown respect to party members, there would have been unity,” Lu said.
A deputy secretary-general was sent to the event in lieu of Tsai, who said she had prior engagements in the south.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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