Efforts to consolidate Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair-man Lien Chan's (
Lien met a final group of lawmakers yesterday, concluding three days of meetings with KMT legislators. Over this period, KMT legislators reached a consensus that Lien should continue to lead the party in contesting the presidential election and competing in December's legislative elections.
"The chairman said that he cannot let [President] Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) get smug about his leaving, so he won't go away until the lawsuit is settled," KMT caucus whip Liao Feng-te (廖風德) said. Liao was among those who met Lien yesterday.
"We agreed that the chairman should stay until the legislative election finishes," KMT Legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環) said.
But arguments seemed to arise when the legislators talked about the future direction the party should take.
Some legislators said that in the presidential election the KMT lost the most votes in the Hokkien group, so they suggested the party move toward a more mainstream voice and ideology to create more space for itself.
"The party has to listen to the voice of the majority group and to realize the majority people's wishes so that the party can survive. If we do not choose the right way, then even having a leader won't work," Yang said.
But Liao opposed Yang's idea.
"If we compete for the Hokkien votes with the Democratic Progressive Party, then we would only become another Taiwan Solidarity Union," Liao said.
Most legislators also agreed that one reason for the KMT's loss in the presidential election was that it was too arrogant during the campaign period.
"The reason we lost the election was not because of the direction we took, but because of the mentality we adopted.
"We thought we would win the election for sure, and we did not pose as an underdog," Liao 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:
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