The head of the DPP's newly established talent training institute, the Ketagalan Academy, said yesterday that the academy is more than just a political party school and is designed to further the nation's democracy.
"The Ketagalan Academy is totally different from the KMT's National Research Institute, which is a school to enhance the ideology of their party members," said Ketagalan Academy superintendent Chen Shih-meng (
"Compared with the KMT's institute, there is a clear line between our academy and the DPP," he said.
"The academy's purpose and budget ... have no relationship with the DPP," Chen told reporters.
He said its only goal is to promote democracy.
The academy, which will be formally launched tomorrow, is the brainchild of President Chen Shui-bian (
Campaign funds
Chen Shih-meng said that funding for the academy comes from neither the DPP nor the government, but comes from surplus money from President Chen's campaign.
According to Chen Shih-meng, President Chen has attributed his success to late DPP chairman Huang Hsin-chieh (
However, opposition politicians and some academics said that, with the academy, the DPP appears to be forcing senior civil servants to join the party. They say the move violates the principle of allowing government officials to be politically neutral.
Moreover, some high-ranking officials, including those with the Government Information Office and Ministry of National Defense, have applied to be lecturers for the academy's first session, which will last two months.
Though students at the academy are predominantly government officials and DPP supporters, Chen Shih-meng said the institute does not require pupils to join the party.
Focus on democracy
"The KMT's institute requires all members to firmly accept the ideology of reunification and the `one China' principle," Chen said. "But our academy will only advocate the value of Taiwan's democratic achievements, instead of reviewing the political stance of its members."
"At first, we may focus on nurturing leaders from all fields, but we will also develop more inclusive sessions to encourage the participation of the public," he said.
The academy's first session begins tomorrow and is expected to include 40 participants.
Vice Minister of National Defense Lin Chong-Pin (林中斌) and National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Chao-ming (蔡朝明) both rejected invitations by the academy to serve as teachers at the session due to public anger over having military officials and intelligence agents playing a role in the party's institute.
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