Analysts said yesterday that Chen Chui-bian's (
"Grassroots electoral officials decided a long time ago that if the pan-blue alliance believed in itself, it could capitalize on the 60 percent of the vote it shared in the 2000 election to win this year's vote. But Chen made the referendum the centerpiece of the election, bringing to the fore the issue of Taiwan's recognition of itself as a nation, winning the support of non-DPP voters and bringing back into the fold many former supporters," said Byron S.J. Weng (翁松燃), professor in the department of public policy and administration at National Chinan University.
Weng, an important advisor to both former president Lee Teng-hui (
"The KMT appears to superstitiously believe that it has the support of the grassroots organizations that it enjoyed for 50 years: the farmers' and fishermen's associations, local factions, party organizations and activists. It believed that it only had to address the question of economics to win the support of the people, but on the question of the nation's status and the advancement of the people, it has very little to say," Weng said.
"Chen Shui-bian focused on new problems facing the people and used new policies to deal with them, showing an ability to change with the times, but [Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman] Lien Chan (
Attributing the DPP's victory to the people of Taiwan, Weng also stressed that the people have demonstrated their collective wisdom many times at crucial electoral moments, adopting rational and peaceful approaches to vote in the face of difficult electoral decisions and animated political climates.
"The voters displayed the resolve to act as a family would, using all their wisdom and judgment to lead Taiwan toward a better future ," he said.
Regarding the attack on Chen and Vice President Annette Lu (
"This drama, coming in the final stages of the campaign, prompted the two camps to stress national unity, making both sides a little nervous, but with [only] a slight impact," said Hawang Shiow-duan (
Chen Chun-lin (
"Chen's great victory in southern Taiwan cancelled out the KMT's lead in northern Taiwan, making the four cities and counties of central Taiwan the decisive constituencies," Chen Chun-lin said.
"Of these four, KMT-controlled Taichung County and Yunlin County both yielded a DPP victory, canceling out the KMT's lead in eastern Taiwan and the offshore islands, so that Chen won by less than 300,000 votes," Chen Chun-lin said.
He suggested that the KMT's raising of suspicions over the shooting incident and independent legislator Sisy Chen's (
"In Taipei City, as well as in central Taiwan, those neutral and non-partisan voters shifted their attitude in Chen's favor due to Sisy Chen and the pan-blue camp's inappropriate reaction to the shooting incident, reducing the gap between the two camps," Chen Chun-lin said. "In fact, over the last month, the two camps' opinion polls have shown the same disparity of not more than three percentage points."
The differences between the two presidential candidates' personalities were particular focuses of the election battle, according to senior political columnist Hu Wen-huei (
On the referendum issue, Chen Shui-bian faced domestic conflicts, resisted boycotts from the opposition party and, particularly later on, even enormous international pressure, but he never backed down.
He succeeded in reversing his reputation for wavering leadership over the last two-and-a-half years by exerting leadership demonstrating a high degree of political vision and resolve.
In contrast, Lien kept changing his mind about the referendum, further reinforcing the impression of the outside world that he was an inferior candidate to his running mate, Soong.
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