Editorial | August is the month Taiwan may prefer to forget
- Island vice-president keeps low profile on US ‘stopovers’ as Taipei is thrown out of Central American Parliament, and faces new Guatemalan president who wants closer ties with Beijing
August has not been a good month for Taiwan. It was ejected from the Central American Parliament. Then Taiwan’s presidential hopeful William Lai Ching-te, who has openly declared that the island is “already an independent country” and was hoping to make a splash during his “stopovers” in the United States, was forced to keep a low profile.
Meanwhile, Guatemala’s president-elect Bernardo Arevalo, who has just won a landslide victory, has declared he wants his country to have closer ties with China.
Things could have been worse, though. At least Arevalo didn’t say he would switch diplomatic recognition from the island to mainland China.
Of the countries that make up the Parliament, also called Parlacen, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and the Dominican Republic now all recognise China; four of them made the switch during the presidential tenure of Tsai Ing-wen, of the secessionist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
Guatemala is the only country that’s still friends with Taiwan and likely filed most of the 32 votes against revoking Taiwan’s observer status in Parlacen, with 73 in favour and nine abstentions.
