Pan-green academics call again for Chen's resignation

A group of pan-green academics who created a stir earlier this month by demanding President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) resignation launched a second salvo yesterday, saying in a statement that 20,000 people supported their petition and that Chen's response to their appeal had been disappointing.

The academics said that they regretted that Chen had not resigned in the wake of their first public statement on July 15, and that Chen had since then failed to offer any solution to the fundamental problem with his continued leadership, which was the collapse of public trust.

In their statement, the pan-green academics also criticized the leaders of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for lacking the stamina and imagination to work out a new vision for the nation's future.

"Only by developing an energetic and independent civil society can we improve the country's democracy," the group's statement said. "Only picky people can promote a better-quality political party."

The press conference was held at the Machangting (馬場町), a former execution ground for political prisoners adjacent to Youth Park, to highlight the fact that the DPP has not sufficiently dealt with the issue of transitional justice, according to the chief convener of the group Fan Yun (范雲), associate professor at National Taiwan University.

Political scientist Wu Rwei-ren (吳叡人) said that building civil society and promoting recognition for Taiwan was the only way out for the country. Wu said the DPP should prepare itself to be the opposition party for a long time, because it had forfeited the opportunity to write a new constitution for the country.

Attorney Lo Bing-cheng (羅秉成), who served as Chen's defense attorney in the lawsuit over the vote recount after the 2004 presidential election, said yesterday that Chen had destroyed the public's trust in the rule of law because of his convoluted and ambiguous excuses for the SOGO voucher scandal and his son-in-law's alleged involvement in corruption.

"Now that President Chen has stubbornly defied the recall drive, why doesn't he just leave office and fight to prove his and his family's innocence and protect his family's reputation? `So, Go,' please!" Lo said.