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Tsai promises that DPP will build a better country

People wearing facemasks protest against unification with China outside the Democratic Progressive Party’s National Convention in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said that her party would make Taiwan a better country if given the chance by voters and urged candidates for the year-end local government elections to work hard to rebuild confidence in the party.

“Right now, the people are giving us a chance to prove that we’re still upholding the DPP’s core values and ideologies, and to prove ourselves to be the party that is closest to the people,” Tsai told delegates at the party’s annual National Convention in Taipei. “We should shoulder the responsibility to present ourselves as not only a better choice than the current Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] administration, but also better than how the DPP performed in the past.”

It’s a critical moment for the DPP, since the public have voiced their discontent with the current government a little more than a year since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was inaugurated with overwhelming popular support, she said.

“In the past year, we’ve seen economic recession on an unprecedented scale, with the unemployment rate hitting a record high,” Tsai said. “The government does not use its resources to look after the disadvantaged; it only cares about rich corporations; it faces and handles natural disasters with a careless attitude; its appeasing policies toward China have meant civil servants and public officials are not willing to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty and dignity.”

When it comes to comparing local governments under the leadership of the DPP and the KMT, Tsai said DPP members had achieved much when heading local governments — such as the Dongshan River Water Park and the International Folklore and Folk Game Festival in Yilan, the Bali Left Bank Park and the Fishermen’s Wharf in Taipei County, the project to turn Love River (愛河) in Kaohsiung into a popular tourist attraction and the success of the World Games in July.

“When we look at the cities and counties under the KMT’s control, we see the Maokong Gondola that has been out of service for more than a year and the Muzha-Neihu Mass Rapid Transit line that is still full of problems, the broken promise of building a branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Taichung, the failure of the Yilan International Rain Festival and the out-of-place Ma Village [馬家庄] in Miaoli County,” Tsai said.

Ma Village is a Hakka village in Tongsiao Township (通霄), Miaoli County, where the majority of the people bear the surname Ma (馬). Having never lived in the village and having learned of its existence in his 40s, Ma, who was born in Hong Kong, decided to designate the village his hometown and goes there each year during the Lunar New Year.

After Ma was elected president, Miaoli County Commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) of the KMT decided to promote tourism by using the connection to Ma and spent hundreds of millions of NT dollars renovating roads and constructing tourist facilities. Ma Village, however, did not receive as many visits as the county government expected.

Following the opening speech, all 14 DPP candidates for the year-end local government elections were introduced to the delegates.

“We must remember that ‘work hard, stay clean, love the country’ are our core beliefs forever,” Tsai said. “Let’s promise people that a better DPP that will make Taiwan a better place.”
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