President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) celebrated the Lunar New Year with reporters yesterday. The president said he wishes that cross-strait relations will improve in the Year of the Goat.
Chen held a lunch party to thank reporters for their hard work during the year and he called them his "best friends" for both encouraging and admonishing his administration.
Toward the end of the party, each reporter received a red envelope from the president with NT$200 in it.
The president said the media has been a driving force for him and his staff, forcing him to examine and improve their overall performance.
He said a Chinese proverb calls for true friends to be honest, sincere and knowledgeable.
By this standard, the president called all of the reporters his and his staff's "true friends."
The president thanked reporters for accompanying him on his tour of all the 319 townships around the country and said that, during the tour, he had felt the warmth of the people and their expectations of the government.
Known to have had a tense relationship with the media until recently, the vice president expressed her wish that she and the media can get along with each other over the new year.
Chen appeared to have a lot of fun at the party and sang many songs. Lu declined the reporters' request when they asked her to sing, but said she would like to be a singer in her next life, because it is too painful to be a politician.
Meanwhile, Chen vowed to improve the economy next year.
He said statistics show that the economy is gradually improving and that, even though people had a rather tough life last year, it is clear that Taiwan's economy is doing better than that of Singapore, Japan and the US.
As long as the people have faith in the government, he said, he won't let the people down in the new year.
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