A controversial politician at the center of two "black gold" criminal investigations was elected as the council speaker of one of the nation's two special municipalities -- showing that politicians despise the public.
Chu An-hsiung (朱安雄), a former Control Yuan member and a re-elected Kaohsiung city councilor, was indicted in May, 2000 for the high-profile Feng An Metal Company (峰安金屬) financial scandal and was later charged with intending to buy votes during the Dec. 7 city councilor elections.
Prosecutors recommended that he serve a seven-year jail term for the former case and that he serve a two-year-and-four-month term for the second.
On Sunday, the DPP Kaohsiung city council caucus decided to support Chu for the speakership in exchange for his support for the DPP's candidate for the vice-speakership, Chang Ching-chuan (張清泉).
Besides, Chu promised to join the DPP by election day.
The DPP caucus' plan immediately triggered an outburst of anger in Kaohsiung, but the party authority did not seem to sense that.
Though the DPP's Kaohsiung chapter wasted no time to show its opposition to the caucus's decision by sending an urgent note to the DPP leadership, DPP headquarters did not react until Tuesday when a crowd of angry DPP members burned their party membership cards in front of the DPP's Kaohsiung offices.
Everywhere, Kaohsiung residents showed their disgust with what they saw as dirty politics.
A rumor was spread that a Kaohsiung-based pro-DPP newspaper reporter wrote an angry column against the DPP caucus, predicting the DPP's downfall in the 2004 presidential election if the caucus went ahead with its plan. But the article was not printed.
During Tuesday's DPP Central Standing Committee meeting, many Tainan and Kaohsiung-based lawmakers showed their outrage over the DPP caucus' plan, some party heavyweights tried to downplay the matter.
When the Central Standing Committee had decided to overrule the caucus' plan and DPP Secretary General Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) had proposed rushing to Kaohsiung to make sure that the party's orders would be followed, a DPP heavyweight disagreed.
"It's too embarrassing that the Secretary General has to monitor the election himself," Legislator Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄) was quoted by a colleague as saying.
"Do you suggest I should go myself?" replied President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), who is also the DPP chairman.
However, party officials from the South finally managed to make the party understand how grave the matter was.
On the other hand, the KMT and PFP neither nominated any candidate for the race, nor did they give any electoral guidelines to their members.
On Wednesday morning, when the results of the Kaohsiung city council speakership election came out, showing that most of the PFP and KMT's councilors had voted for Chu, PFP chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) was visiting Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), showing his desire to mend relations with the KMT star in an effort to cement his bid for the 2004 presidential election.
Wednesday afternoon, KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) reacted to Chu's election. "Party members involved in the alleged bribery [NT$10 million allegedly paid by Chu] would be expelled. We urge an investigation into the allegations as soon as possible," said Lien -- as if it's OK to support Chu as long as bribery was not involved.
The PFP was silent, with no party leaders making any comment on the election.
Lien only turned tough yesterday when the local media devoted massive coverage to the issue and showed a lot of resentment over the incident. The KMT chairman ordered party members to unseat the newly elected Chu and to approve party officials' resignations.
However, Soong was the last to comment later yesterday, spouting party rhetoric about "the PFP's anti-black gold spirit" and urged the investigators to give a clear answer as soon as possible to whether his party members were involved in any bribery.
"Even if the PFP stopped existing, we would still stick to clean politics. If lawful, we support the KMT's proposal to unseat Chu," said Soong.
No further measures were announced by Soong, except that he approved of PFP Secretary General David Chung's (鍾榮吉) resignation.
Soong seems to be preoccupied only with his bid in the 2004 presidential election.
The party leaders' reactions are simply in reaction to the public's anger. The difference is that some are more sensitive to the people's feelings, while others reacted with mere hypocritical gestures.
But they all under-estimated the public's sentiment -- the people are really fed up with black-gold politics.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: