President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday attributed his re-election to an upsurge of "local awareness," saying that his "one country on each side" of the Taiwan Strait approach has become the mainstream view in Taiwanese society.
The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) next goal is to gain a majority of seats in the Legislative Yuan after the legislative elections at the end of the year, Chen said on Thursday in an interview with Japan's Daily Yomiuri newspaper. The interview was published yesterday.
"The opposition parties' continual protests since their failure in the presidential election will help the DPP to realize this goal," he was quoted as saying.
Chen said that a "Taiwanese awareness" means to "protect Taiwan against China" and that it was almost impossible for Tai-wanese to accept Beijing's "one country, two systems" policy, which has been proved to be a failure by events in Hong Kong.
He said that the Beijing leadership is extremely afraid that Taiwan's democratic development might further affect Hong Kong, as well as China itself.
Chen said his inauguration speech on May 20 will propose a new vision for cross-strait relations, based on the promises he made four years ago.
He also confirmed his intention to hold a national referendum in 2006 about passing a new constitution, which would be implemented in 2008.
The US government has expressed serious concerns about Chen's plans for a new constitution, which the foreign media has described as a concrete move toward Taiwanese independence. According to Chen, a new constitution would be an important mechanism to counter China's military threats.
He said that the new constitution would legislate a government with three branches, to replace the current five.
It would also expand presidential power and halve the number of legislative seats.
"The establishment of a new constitution is a reform for democracy, not a timetable for the independence of Taiwan," Chen told the Daily Yomiuri.
The newspaper said that Chen's next step on the road to constitutional reform would be to gain a DPP majority in the 225-seat Legislative Yuan.
On the subject of the election eve assassination attempt, Chen said that the incident was the result of many coincidences and accidental elements.
"I don't believe that the assassination attempt would have a negative effect on Taiwan's democracy," Chen said.
He urged the people of Taiwan to accept the result of the election and understand the importance of being united.
"Even if the difference between candidates is just one vote, the winner is still the winner. That is the real meaning of the democracy," Chen said.
In response to a question about the nation's first national referendum, which failed to get the required number of votes to make it valid, Chen said that the experience was still very successful.
"Many people thought that the referendum represented Taiwanese independence and would just lead to war and disaster, and these speculations have now been shown to be false," he said.
He said that holding the referendum had been a hard-won battle against China's threats and international criticism.
"I believe that referendums will gradually become part of common life," Chen said.
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
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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