Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) idea of picking a chief executive officer (CEO) for premier has hogged the headlines in the past few days. However, after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄) made it clear at Thursday's meeting with President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) that the KMT was not interested, Hsieh had to abandon the idea.

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By Lin Cho-shui 林濁水
BECAUSE THE DEMOCRATIC Progressive Party (DPP) won less than one-fourth of the legislative seats in the Jan. 12 elections, it would be difficult for the party to get any of the 16 legislative committee chairmanships if the posts were filled by voting. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has offered to let the DPP have four of these seats, and DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) has said the party should accept it or it might not be able to propose laws in future.

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Capitalist forces alone are not able to meet the challenge of changing the ways we produce and consume power. It is governments that hold the key to meaningful reform
By Jeroen Van Der Veer
By 2100, the world's energy system will be radically different from today's.

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By Natasha Singer
In a new self-help book called How Not to Look Old, chapter headings in screaming capital letters warn readers of the dreaded signs of aging that are to be avoided at all costs.

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By Victor Keegan
Governments keep worrying about immigration and how they can prevent people from entering their countries. But while they are doing this a subtle form of exodus is taking place.

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A person should always be wary of a politician's words and more so of their promises. One hundred years of peace can only be offered either in the knowledge of assurances from China not to threaten Taiwan or based on sheer hope. Either way, it resonates unfortunately with the late British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time."

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Analyses of the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) loss in the media and other international forums appear to consist of a melange of banal observations of Taiwanese politics, application of voter behavior models more appropriate to Western political systems and, worst of all, an abundance of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) talking points. This discourse is both distant from the reality of local politics and thoroughly lacking in evidentiary support. As a result, it has little, if any, explanatory power.

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Your report on broadband coverage ("Broadband coverage to hit 100% soon, NCC predicts," Jan. 19, page 2) is just a painful sham. While low-level, Internet coverage may be widespread, residential customers have been stonewalled for several years when asking for high-speed connections such as basic T1 lines.

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I would like to share my travel experience in response to the Taipei Times' recent articles on ratings of Taiwan as a tourist destination.

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