Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Hung Hsiu-chu’s (洪秀柱) campaign team yesterday said that Hung would return to her normal schedule today, ending the “temporary break from daily campaign activities” she announced late on Wednesday night.
Hung’s spokesperson on Thursday said that Hung would resurface on Wednesday next week “at the latest” for a campaign activity scheduled to be hosted by KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫).
However, just three days after Hung’s unexpected announcement on Facebook sparked speculation, her office announced that she is scheduled to appear at a news conference this morning entitled “insisting on walking the right path,” and that she is also scheduled to attend at least three other events today.
In her second diary-like Facebook post late on Friday night, which suggested she was in a temple, Hung said Taiwan has long been trapped in populist politics and that politicians have aimed to win the popular vote by fair means or foul.
“We talk about freedom, but overlook discipline; we speak freely about democracy, but forget about what is right and wrong. I have visited many places in these past days and there are too many silent crowds, who do not say much, but I can feel their anxiety about Taiwan’s future from how they grip my hands and look at me with warm sincerity,” she wrote. “But do I have the power to speak for them?”
Hung, as in Thursday’s diary-like post, said she had sought help from “looking at a bodhisattva [statue] with a face of benevolence” and gained “certain enlightenment.”
“Read [the sutras], pray to a bodhisattva, but also be a bodhisattva,” Hung said. “In the face of Taiwan’s populism and hypocrisy, maybe I should also be a Vajrapani [warrior-attendant to the Bhudda] that safeguards virtuous values.”
Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) of the Democratic Progressive Party, who also halted presidential candidate campaign events in 2008 when he injured his leg, said it is Hung’s right to choose to go into “seclusion.”
“However, gods and buddhas might be shocked, as bodhisattvas do not participate in elections,” he said.
Even KMT spokesperson Yang Wei-chung (楊偉中) mocked the post, saying, without specifically referring to Hung, “[are we going to have] a union of religion and state now?”
“Amida Buddha,” he added, referring to a Buddhist mantra.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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