The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday denied a statement by a former chairman, Richard Bush, that the US may try to sway vote in the 2016 presidential election, saying the US government would not intervene in Taiwan’s elections.
“He [Bush] is not a government representative anymore, so he was speaking on his own capacity and does not represent the US government,” AIT spokesperson Mark Zimmer told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview. “We would leave the election to the people of Taiwan, and would not try to intervene or influence.”
AIT officials would meet with candidates during elections, “but that’s not influencing or showing our support for particular candidates,” he said.
Bush, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told a conference on cross-strait relations in Washington on Friday that “the US government at some time and in some way will express itself about the implications of the 2016 election for US interests.”
While he did not speculate about what might happen, Bush indicated that Washington would declare a preference for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate because there were lingering doubts about the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) cross-strait policies.
Bush said that the US government, under the administrations of former US presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and US President Barack Obama, has shown its views on Taiwan’s presidential elections either through actions, public statements, or a newspaper interview of an anonymous official, such as was published in the Financial Times in 2012.
DPP Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), who served as Mainland Affairs Council chairman and the representative to the US during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration and became the DPP’s representative in the US in November 2012, yesterday said that Taiwanese have the right to make their own decisions.
“The people of Taiwan have the right to vote without being influenced by an outside force,” he said. “If the people of Taiwan could only make decisions in accordance with the interests of a particular country, it is not only against US foreign policy, but also against the Taiwan Relations Act [TRA].”
The US government has always expressed its support for democracy and free elections in Taiwan, and has said it would work with democratically elected governments, adding that the TRA also states that Taiwan should be involved in a dialogue with China under no threats, Wu said.
“If anyone says that the US should intervene in the election in Taiwan because of China, the person is basically saying that ‘authoritarian China may decide on a democratic election,’” Wu said. “I believe this does not represent the mainstream opinion in the US.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
RSS