President and DPP Chairman Chen Shui-bian (
Aiming to deflect criticism from the opposition that those who chose to join the DPP did it to be closer to the center of power, Chen stressed there are no privileges or special benefits for DPP members.
"In a democratic society, the term `party member' is very neutral -- unlike in the authoritarian era when a `party member' had a special political status," Chen said at the swearing-in ceremony.
"Members who choose to join the DPP will have more responsibilities to serve and contribute to society. They will have absolutely no privileges or special benefits."
Nine police officers, along with a group of governmental officials and cultural elite, joined the DPP yesterday at a ceremony presided over by the president.
The new members include Keelung City Police Headquarters Director Wu Chen-chi (吳振吉), Presidential Office Security Department Chief Hsieh Fan-fan (謝芬芬) and Chang Chun-po (張春波), the security department chief of the presidential residence.
The party also chose to recruit representatives from different ethnic groups such as the prominent Hakka writer Chung Chao-cheng (
Council of Cultural Affairs Chairwoman Tchen Yu-chiou (陳郁秀) also joined the party along with senior adviser to the president Ku Kuan-min (辜寬敏), chairman of the Taiwan Provincial Government Fan Kuang-chun (范光群), Council of Agriculture Chairman Lee Chin-lung (李金龍) and minister without portfolio Hu Sheng-cheng (胡勝正).
It was the second time that the DPP invited a group of executives and cultural leaders into the party.
Given that the DPP has criticized the KMT's efforts to control the nation's police and military systems by forcing them to join the party, PFP lawmakers said yesterday that the DPP had taken the path of its predecessor.
The KMT denounced the DPP's recruiting drive as a way to hide their incompetence as a ruling party.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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