President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday was sworn in as the 11th president of the Republic of China (ROC), but many of Chen's supporters at the ceremony were less than pleased with the ROC national flags they were given to wave, many of which were dumped in piles on the street.
Nearly 180,000 Chen supporters from around the country packed Ketagalan Boulevard for the inauguration. Although the Presidential Office, the organizer of the inauguration, gave a small national flag to each participant, many supporters were lukewarm about waving the flags while cheering for Chen.
"I was not satisfied with holding this flag. If it were not President Chen enduring the name `ROC,' I wouldn't have agreed to hold this flag. After all, we were treated terribly by the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] regime representing this flag," a supporter in his 60s from Keelung County said yesterday.
Some supporters holding the flags said they'd prefer to be holding something else.
"If the national title were changed, we would certainly have to use Taiwan's own national flag," another supporter said.
Some said they were only holding the flags because they were printed with Chen's and Vice President Annette Lu's (
The supporters' dissatisfaction with the flags was apparent, with hundreds of discarded flags laying in piles up and down Ketagalan Boulevard.
The non-stop rain yesterday morning did little to dampen the passion of Chen's jubilant, although bedraggled, supporters.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said as many as 180,000 people of the 200,000 supporters invited by Chen attended the inauguration. As Chen walked on to the stage, some started shouting "Viva, A-bian," referring to Chen by his nickname.
Spread across the nearby 228 Peace Memorial Park and Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, the supporters appeared in good order despite some confrontations in front of KMT headquarters, which faces the Presidential Office at the other end of Ketagalan Boulevard.
The KMT protesters, who hung up a big white banner reading "Democracy is Dead," were confined to the party's headquarters by lines of police.
They also released black balloons with the words "we want truth and democracy" on them in an attempt to interfere with the inauguration.
Verbal confrontations developed into a tussle between supporters of the pan-green and pan-blue camps when the KMT supporters tried to release a bigger balloon and the police stopped them.
Former head of a local female gang, Wang Lan (
However, Wang's warnings were dismissed by other pan-blue protesters, who said: "Who do you think you are?"
The crowds dispersed without any major disturbance.
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