The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday said that Hon Hai Precision Industries Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) reneged on a promise to support it, a day after the tycoon quit the party.
Gou’s departure came after months of speculation that he might run as an independent in next year’s presidential election after losing the KMT’s presidential primary to Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) in July.
The KMT posted on Facebook a video montage of Gou pledging that he would support the winner of the primary.
Photo courtesy of Gou’s campaign
Gou is shown as having made statements to that effect on April 17, when he received honorary membership of the party, and on May 13, after he emerged from a conference with KMT Chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義).
Former Hon Hai “chairman Gou, you said you would do everything in your power to support the candidate elected by the party’s nomination process. Now what?” the post asked.
“The administrator of this account believed that as an honorary party member, you would understand the hard work the chairman [Wu] and the party center put into the primary, but you quit,” it said.
The KMT Culture and Communications Committee said in a statement that Gou has not lived up to the solemn promises he made when he accepted KMT membership in front of portraits of the party’s past leaders, including Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙), Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國).
Gou yesterday posted a video greeting for the Mid-Autumn Festival on Facebook, saying: “Leaving the party lifted a great weight off my shoulders.”
The Central Election Commission yesterday began registration of presidential candidates, with Ou Chung-ching (歐崇敬), a Formosa Alliance member running without the party’s blessing; Non-Partisan Solidarity Union member Chen Yuan-chi (陳源奇); and Master Wu-shan (釋悟善), a Buddhist monk, picking up forms.
Wu-shan said that he gave more than NT$100 million (US$3.22 million) to charitable causes and his platform is to recreate Taiwan’s “economic miracle” by “buying emptiness, moving emptiness and turning all to emptiness.”
Chen, a former representative of the now-defunct National Assembly, ran in the Taipei City Council’s Second District by-election in January and received 89 votes. He is perhaps best known for the 1995 legislative election in Matsu, where he received five votes.
Ou is on the Formosa Alliance’s decisionmaking committee and last week announced his presidential ambitions on YouTube.
Tuesday next week is the final day that the commission accepts applications from independent candidates.
CAUTION: Based on intelligence from the nation’s security agencies, MOFA has cautioned Taiwanese travelers about heightened safety risks in China-friendly countries The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday urged Taiwanese to be aware of their safety when traveling abroad, especially in countries that are friendly to China. China in June last year issued 22 guidelines that allow its courts to try in absentia and sentence to death so-called “diehard” Taiwanese independence activists, even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction in Taiwan. Late last month, a senior Chinese official gave closed-door instructions to state security units to implement the guidelines in countries friendly to China, a government memo and a senior Taiwan security official said, based on information gathered by Taiwan’s intelligence agency. The
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said yesterday that it is looking to hire 8,000 people this year, at a time when the tech giant is expanding production capacity to maintain its lead over competitors. To attract talent, TSMC would launch a large-scale recruitment campaign on campuses across Taiwan, where a newly recruited engineer with a master’s degree could expect to receive an average salary of NT$2.2 million (US$60,912), which is much higher than the 2023 national average of NT$709,000 for those in the same category, according to government statistics. TSMC, which accounted for more than 60 percent
Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), a Taiwanese businessman and deputy convener of the nation’s National Climate Change Committee, said yesterday that “electrical power is national power” and nuclear energy is “very important to Taiwan.” Tung made the remarks, suggesting that his views do not align with the country’s current official policy of phasing out nuclear energy, at a forum organized by the Taiwan People’s Party titled “Challenges and Prospects of Taiwan’s AI Industry and Energy Policy.” “Taiwan is currently pursuing industries with high added- value and is developing vigorously, and this all requires electricity,” said the chairman
The National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday that it will revoke the dependent-based residence permit of a Chinese social media influencer who reportedly “openly advocated for [China’s] unification through military force” with Taiwan. The Chinese national, identified by her surname Liu (劉), will have her residence permit revoked in accordance with Article 14 of the “Measures for the permission of family- based residence, long-term residence and settlement of people from the Mainland Area in the Taiwan Area,” the NIA said in a news release. The agency explained it received reports that Liu made “unifying Taiwan through military force” statements on her online
RSS