Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) will take over the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as acting chairwoman, in the wake of Su Tseng-chang's (蘇貞昌) resignation from the party's top job to shoulder responsibility for the DPP's election debacle.
After its defeat in the three-in-one elections held last Saturday, the DPP held a weekly Central Standing Committee meeting yesterday afternoon to discuss the failure and the direction of the party. Within a few hours, all the committee members had resolved that Lu should assume the DPP's top post, as Su insisted on resigning yesterday.
"I'm also surprised at this resolution. To be frank, I have no preparation for this post at all," Lu said after walking out of the meeting.
"All the committee members approved of Chairman Su's painstaking efforts and thought that he had done his best in this election, and many of them suggested that he stay on," Lu said. "However, although we called him during the meeting, Su still insisted on leaving."
Lu said that she would ask for advice from DPP officials as soon as possible.
During the meeting, the DPP also decided that an election for the post will be held within one month, and the new chairperson will be elected around the end of next month, Secretary-General Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said yesterday.
After the fiasco of the "three-in-one" elections on Saturday, Lee said that the DPP had come up with seven major causes for the trouncing in a report, and that committee members shared their opinions for more than three hours.
Former Presidential Office secretary-general Chen Che-nan's (陳哲男) involvement in the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) scandal triggered a chain reaction of muckraking, which mauled the DPP's image of integrity and reform and weakened voter's trust in the party, the report said.
Even President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) apology, investigation and expulsion of Chen Che-nan from the DPP could not appease voter distrust, Lee said. And because the mass media and the opposition parties "played up" the incident, voter support for the party declined all the way to polling day, he said.
Second, the government's performance did not meet the public's expectations, and people were not satisfied with the pace of reform, the report said.
"Although we earned a positive reaction from local residents, the central government did not perform as well as people expected," Lee said.
Third, combining the elections of local government chiefs, township chiefs and city and county councilors into the "three-in-one" elections was another key to the DPP's defeat, the report said.
The report said that although combining the elections -- a policy devised by the DPP government -- saved social and governmental resources and simplified the elections, the policy was actually advantageous to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which has a stronger and more solid local network than the DPP.
"The KMT has strong organizations of so-called "vote captains," who are usually borough chiefs. The elections made it convenient for the KMT to launch united campaigns for their candidates and to implement comprehensive vote-buying," Lee said. "In that regard, DPP candidates suffered from the [DPP's] policy, although the reform is good."
TPP RALLY: The clashes occurred near the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Saturday at a rally to mark the anniversary of a raid on former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je People who clashed with police at a Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally in Taipei on Saturday would be referred to prosecutors for investigation, said the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the National Police Agency. Taipei police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by “disorderly” demonstrators, as well as contraventions of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. It added that amid the “severe pushing and jostling” by some demonstrators, eight police officers were injured, including one who was sent to hospital after losing consciousness, allegedly due to heat stroke. The Taipei
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
‘NOT ALONE’: A Taiwan Strait war would disrupt global trade routes, and could spark a worldwide crisis, so a powerful US presence is needed as a deterrence, a US senator said US Senator Deb Fischer on Thursday urged her colleagues in the US Congress to deepen Washington’s cooperation with Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific partners to contain the global security threat from China. Fischer and other lawmakers recently returned from an official trip to the Indo-Pacific region, where they toured US military bases in Hawaii and Guam, and visited leaders, including President William Lai (賴清德). The trip underscored the reality that the world is undergoing turmoil, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region is crucial to the security interests of the US and its partners, she said. Her visit to Taiwan demonstrated ways the
RESPONSE: The transit sends a message that China’s alignment with other countries would not deter the West from defending freedom of navigation, an academic said Canadian frigate the Ville de Quebec and Australian guided-missile destroyer the Brisbane transited the Taiwan Strait yesterday morning, the first time the two nations have conducted a joint freedom of navigation operation. The Canadian and Australian militaries did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Ministry of National Defense declined to confirm the passage, saying only that Taiwan’s armed forces had deployed surveillance and reconnaissance assets, along with warships and combat aircraft, to safeguard security across the Strait. The two vessels were observed transiting northward along the eastern side of the Taiwan Strait’s median line, with Japan being their most likely destination,
RSS