With a key meeting of the Central Standing Committee coming up next week, the DPP is thinking about how to reach the goal of turning Taiwan into a nuclear-free country and at the same time ease the growing pressure from anti-nuclear activists led by former party member Lin I-hsiung (林義雄).
A staunch anti-nuclear campaigner, Lin will meet with Premier Yu Shyi-kun on March 17.
Lin will also lead a sit-down demonstration in front of the presidential official on May 19 to seek the government's support for a national referendum on the future of the controversial Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
The meeting with Yu will be the first time Lin has been able to discuss the matter directly with the government, following his sustained anti-nuclear efforts through his weekend marches nationwide.
Since Sept. 21 last year, Lin has led activists on a 1,000km march across the country to rally support for a national referendum on the future of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
He and his followers plan to march 20km every weekend for at least 50 weeks.
DPP lawmakers acknowledged yesterday that the party is under tremendous pressure from Lin, who is highly respected within the party and by pro-independence groups.
In a meeting on Wednesday, leaders of the Association for Promoting Public Voting on Nuke 4 (核四公投促進會) were disappointed after DPP officials disagreed with activists' proposals to hold a referendum on the future of the nuclear plant along with the presidential election in March next year.
DPP Deputy Secretary General Lee Ying-yuan (
Cheng
The association argues that the referendum can be held under the auspices of natural law, that is, that the right to hold such a vote is "nature given" and requires no special legislation.
In October 2000, the government decided to halt construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant. But in the following January, it gave in to pressure from opposition parties and reversed its decision -- giving the go ahead to complete construction of the plant.
This flip-flop spawned criticism that the government was "weak and wavering."
Lee said the criticism was too harsh because the DPP has paid a high political price during the controversy.
He said the party supports a referendum law, as long as the law is not applied to sensitive issues related to national identity such as the national flag or the nation's official name.
In fact, Lee said, the Cabinet is drafting its version of a referendum law, which is to be applied on issues unrelated to sovereignty.
Cabinet officials said the government is making the law one of its top priorities, and it could be passed by the legislature before next year's presidential election.
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