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.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS