President Chen Shui-bian (
For more than a week, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has engaged in sometimes bitter infighting over Vice President Annette Lu's (
At yesterday's Central Executive Committee meeting, Chen offered only a brief comment when asked what he thought about the debate: "I hope everyone can encourage one another."
His comment came as a response to committee members Yu Hung (
However, Yu and Tsai's proposal met with disagreement from other party officials, who said the rule would contradict the party's enshrined values of democracy and freedom of speech.
While trying to interpret Chen's vague remark, DPP Legislator Lawrence Gao (
"It is a good thing to see everyone reach a consensus on the issue and stop throwing malignant remarks at each other. But using a compulsory rule to restrain each other from talking about it, that goes against the rules of democracy and progress that the party has enshrined," Gao said.
The suggestion that Yu and Tsai put forward to quell the internal squabble was a result of infighting between the sometimes outspoken Lu and her opponents within the party.
Last week, Lu launched an attack on DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (
Lu subsequently lashed out at Chiu, accusing the lawmaker's father, a democracy activist, of acting cowardly during the 1979 Kaohsiung Incident rebellion against the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
In response, veteran DPP Legislator Lin Chou-shui (林濁水) yesterday criticized Lu's own integrity in the incident, accusing her of turning in several fellow dissidents when she was being interrogated during the subsequent crackdown.
Lin's remarks prompted another veteran DPP member, Chang Chun-hung (
"People who haven't lived through that disaster, that hell, I hope they won't say anything." Chang told reporters. "They don't have enough credentials to say anything."
Later yesterday, Lin clarified his remarks, saying, "In the atmosphere of terror during the Kaohsiung Incident, many of the people arrested made false confessions under torture."
However, Lin criticized Lu again by saying that everyone was fearful during the repressive era and people shouldn't argue about who was more courageous at that time.
"Even though Lu was not the one turning in most of her fellow dissidents, she certainly contributed to the turning in of some of her fellows," Lin said.
The DPP's Central Executive Committee meeting yesterday approved the schedule for holding a primary for the presidential election, spanning from late October to mid-December.
According to the schedule, the party will announce the official nomination for the presidential candidate on Dec. 10 and then the presidential candidate will subsequently announce his running mate during the DPP's National Assembly on Dec. 13.
Currently, Chen is the only one within the DPP intending to run in the 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