Seven contenders for the year-end legislative elections declared their candidacy under the banner of the Taiwan Democratic School (TDS) yesterday in Taipei.
They were nominated by the TDS, which was founded by former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (
The school is a political party/educational institution that seeks to provide an alternative to the current parties for voters disappointed with the pan-green and pan-blue camps in the wake of the March 20 presidential election.
The other candidates are Independent Legislator May Chin (高金素梅), film director and TDS principal Ho Hsiao-hsen (侯孝賢), ETTV executive director Joanna Lei (雷倩), former DPP National Assembly representative and TDS vice principal Cheng Li-wen (鄭麗文), agricultural activist and former DPP Central Standing Committee member Hsu Neng-tung (許能通), independent Legislator Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴) and documentary producer Lan Po-chou (藍博洲).
Both Chin and Lei had previously announced their intent to run.
"I hope that the TDS can become a public commodity. We emphasize that democratic thought should once again enlighten, that it should once again begin," Hsu said yesterday.
For the public good, Hsu said, the school is willing to declare its support for candidates of any party to bolster that person's chances of success. The impetus for the nominations and for the TDS's establishment were the result of disillusionment with the state of democracy under President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) administration, he said.
Hsu said that he and other TDS founders had thought that democracy had taken root in Taiwan and had already grown as strong as a tree, but the past few years had led them to conclude that the heart of the "tree" had rotted away.
The school's candidates aim to bring principles and values back to the Taiwanese political scene, Cheng said.
All seven candidates have made strong contributions to the community, Cheng said, pointing to Chin's record as an Aboriginal rights activist and Lan's documentaries on the "White Terror" era.
Questioned about the nomination of the politically beleaguered Su, Cheng said that the TDS decided to nominate him based on his emphasis on values.
"He's been standing up for his principles with no one behind him. We are showing our support," Cheng said.
Su was recently involved in a scandal where he claimed one of the Council of Grand Justices attempted to persuade him to not support a statute establishing an investigation committee into the March presidential election.
Cheng said that while the success of the seven candidates is up in the air, it is important to plant the seeds of a new era in Taiwanese democracy.
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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