Tue, May 05, 2026 page2

• Lai heads home after visit to Eswatini

  ‘COMMAND VACUUM’: The plane Lai took to Eswatini lacked the secure equipment needed to ensure the president can communicate in an emergency, a KMT lawmaker said

  • By Lin Hsin-han and Esme Yeh / Staff reporter, with staff writer and Bloomberg
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  President William Lai (賴清德) has departed Eswatini following a surprise trip to Africa in defiance of Beijing’s efforts to thwart his diplomatic outreach, a source said yesterday.

  Lai is returning to Taiwan by again using the private plane of Eswatini’s monarch, a person familiar with his plans said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the travel.

  Lai’s planned departure to Eswatini on April 22 was postponed after the Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar revoked overflight permits for the president’s chartered plane, moves that Lai’s office attributed to China’s “economic coercion” of the African nations.

  

  President William Lai, center, is greeted by Taiwanese expats upon his arrival in Eswatini on Saturday.

  Photo: screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Flickr page

  Local media reported that the president traveled to Eswatini on Saturday aboard King Mswati III’s private jet, flying directly from Taipei to Eswatini.

  In Taipei yesterday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Yu-chen (許宇甄) said Lai traveling to the Kingdom of Eswatini on a chartered plane provided by the African diplomatic ally raises national security concerns.

  While consolidating diplomatic ties is important and Lai deserves recognition for his efforts, the king’s jet lacks the secure communications equipment of Taiwan’s presidential aircraft, which is equipped with a military-standard encrypted command-and-control system to ensure real-time communication with the Hengshan Military Command Center, Hsu said.

  

  People stand in front of the plane of Eswatini’s King Mswati III, an Airbus A340 that was resold to Eswatini in 2016 by Taiwan’s China Airlines, in an undated photograph.

  Photo from James Jseng’s Facebook

  “If a cross-strait emergency were to arise mid-flight, would the president be left relying on a civilian satellite phone to issue commands?” she said.

  “While the government says it maintains real-time control over national security, the absence of military-grade encrypted communications means the 14-hour journey [to Eswatini] could have effectively become a ‘command vacuum,’ leaving national security in a highly uncertain state,” she said.

  The concerns remain for the return flight, Hsu added.

  She also disagreed with Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu’s (吳志中) defense of the “arrive then announce” strategy for world leaders traveling abroad, which Wu said had been used by US President Donald Trump, as well as former US presidents.

  “That is utterly misleading,” Hsu said.

  US presidential trips are kept confidential until arrival only when the head of state is visiting conflict zones, such as in Iraq, Afghanistan or Ukraine, to avoid security risks, she said.

  However, Eswatini is an ally, making the unannounced arrival not only disrespectful to the African nation, but also a deliberate move to foment a quasi-war atmosphere in Taiwan, she said.

  In some cases, it is “more justifiable” for heads of state to make diplomatic visits aboard charter flights of a foreign nation, such as when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visited the US aboard a US military aircraft, or when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un traveled to Singapore on a charter plane of Chinese state-run Air China, Hsu said.

  However, the Republic of China (ROC) has its own presidential aircraft, which flies the national flag to demonstrate the nation’s sovereignty, she said.

  It creates a diplomatic predicament when the commander-in-chief of Taiwan’s armed forces has to rely on a foreign charter plane to visit an allied country, she said.

  From an international law perspective, a head-of-state aircraft is typically regarded as a mobile extension of a sovereign territory, entitled to full immunity and jurisdictional protections, she said.

  However, the king’s Airbus A340-313 used by Lai is owned by the Eswatini government and operated by foreign pilots, Hsu said.

  If a technical incident or legal dispute were to occur during the president’s 14-hour return flight, primary jurisdiction would lie with Eswatini rather than the ROC, she said.

  “Entrusting the head of state’s legal and physical security entirely to a foreign crew operating under a fundamentally different legal system represents a significant constitutional risk, which could be seen as diminishing the nation’s standing and effectively ceding a measure of sovereignty,” she said.
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