Kaohsiung City Mayor and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) once said Li Ao (
Hsieh, who went head to head with Li during the referendum debates in March, commented at the time that although dangerous items and weapons had been prohibited from debate premises, Li's mouth was in fact the most "dangerous item" of all.
While Li's reputation as a dissenting scholar and outspoken critic of the government is firmly established, it is less clear how popular his views are with voters. When Li ran for president in 2000, he managed to garner just 0.13 percent of the vote. If nothing else, his race for a legislative seat in the hotly contested Taipei City southern district will be an indication of how well his criticism resonates with his constituency.
It comes as no surprise that Li is running as an independent, having always insisted on his individuality. Even when Li ran for president on the New Party ticket, he refused to join the party. But despite his maverick status, Li poses a formidable threat to his opponents, particularly those whose success could depend on how many votes Li manages to siphon from each political party's voter base.
"His affect on the vote is not just limited to the pan-blue camp -- even someone like [DPP legislator] Shen Fu-hsiung [沈富雄] could be affected," said People First Party legislator and candidate in the southern district Pang Chien-kuo (龐建國), pointing out that both were seen as outspoken in their criticism of the government.
Despite his advocacy of reunification with China and the "one country two systems" formula, Li's opposition to the government actually began with his contributions to the tangwai democratic movement in Taiwan in the 1960s to 1980s. Li helped pro-independence political prisoner Peng Ming-min (彭明敏) escaped Taiwan in 1970.
Having served time in prison for his involvement with anti-government democratic activities, he once said that he was the only Mainlander ever to be jailed for the cause of Taiwan independence. Li was born in China and did not move to Taiwan until he was fourteen.
When Li was nominated as the New Party's presidential candidate in 2000, he said that running for president was not a political activity but an intellectual one. Elections allow for society's "best thinkers" to brainwash everyone and lead society in the correct direction toward democracy, he said. Li's participation in the upcoming legislative elections as an independent candidate is his gamble to be chosen as one of society's "best thinkers."
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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