Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairwoman Lin Cheng-chih (林澄枝) yesterday suggested that the KMT streamline its internal organization and sell its headquarters building to accelerate the party's reform.
"The KMT needs to do something earthshaking and refreshing so that the public will marvel at our efforts to reform," Lin said yesterday afternoon at a meeting of a group charged with reforming the party.
The group, led by Lin and another KMT vice chairman, Wu Po-hsiung (
Lin said that KMT needed to streamline its affiliated organizations and cut staff so that the party could work more effectively and efficiently.
Lin suggested selling the KMT headquarters building opposite the Presidential Office to raise money to pay for lay-offs and early retirements and seek more volunteers to help with party affairs and activities.
Lin also recommended dissolving the offices of the party's vice chairmen to clear communication channels to those higher in the organization.
"I am sad when I hear people say we [KMT vice chairmen] are reluctant to leave our offices," Lin said. "That's not true. I feel I still have responsibility to Chairman Lien Chan (
Lin said she was unsatisfied with many local campaigners who did little to take care of the KMT's electorate between elections but were keen to wave little flags when Lien sought support during campaigns.
In the meeting, Wu said that a second wave of reform could only happen after in-depth discussion of the first reform wave launched in 2000 after the presidential election.
Wu said that he would invite another vice chairman, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Lin said that the KMT made a lot of mistakes in its first attempt at reform that had hurt local supporters' morale.
"At that time, many party members were so eager to implement reform that they did not consult other experienced members," Lin said. "Quite a few laymen made wrong decisions, which harmed local consolidation."
She said it was wrong, for example, for the party to eliminate organizations founded by local women administrators, saying that women supporters were important and enthusiastic in collecting votes even when they looked old or inconspicuous.
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