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.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but