The DPP yesterday reaffirmed President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) pledge to hold a referendum on domestic issues, saying that since the opposition parties' heads also expressed their support for referendums recently, the circumstances for carrying out referendums are favorable.
"Even KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and PFP chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜), whose parties have continually blocked any possibility of holding a national referendum or plebiscite, now have vowed to support the realization of a referendum," DPP Deputy Secretary-General Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said.
"Such a change means that everyone must now realize we need a new mechanism to cope with the current chaos at the Legislative Yuan," Lee said. "If we want to avoid further misunderstandings, a national referendum can be held after the presidential election next March and before the new president's inauguration on May 20."
Lee said that according to DPP surveys, over 65 percent of the population support holding a referendum on the issue of joining the World Health Organization (WHO).
"So it's the time to adopt the final step of realizing the referendum," he said.
Lee stressed that President Chen had pledged since his inauguration speech that the DPP government will not execute any referendum on the issue of independence or reunification with China, adding that Chen's policy to launch a national referendum related to public affairs has not violated his promise.
Some local media said last week the US government put pressure on Taiwan to put a halt to any referendums and Douglas Paal, director of the American Institute in Taiwan even directly expressed opposition to Chen on this issue during a private meeting at the Presidential Office. Chen denied the report on Sunday
DPP Legislator Parris Chang (張旭成), who is visiting Washington as a member of a legislative delegation, told reporters that according to his recent communication with the US government, the US is not happy to see the referendum policy.
"The officials I have contacted from the AIT and the Department of State all expressed a negative attitude toward Taiwan's referendum policy," Chang said.
"We believe that the US government's action was made due to pressure from China," he said, "because the Beijing authorities have always expressed their anxiety about the referendum issue in Taiwan."
"We will explain the real content of Taiwan's policy to the US government but at the same time, we also have to make a proper protest to the US government for interfering in our domestic affairs," Chang said.
"We hope that the US will not violate its democratic and human-rights principles to obstruct Taiwan's movement to launch the referendum," he said.
Meanwhile, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday reaffirmed the government's right to exercise a national referendum on entry to the WHO and nuclear-power issues when he received members of pro-independent academic groups at the Presidential Office.
"President Chen said that the referendum is a basic human right, which should not be blocked by any person or political party," said Chen I-shen (陳儀深), deputy chairman of the Northern Taiwan Society.
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