With the legislative majority it retained in last Saturday's legislative elections, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will work for the economic welfare of the nation, improve cross-strait relations and balance the government , the KMT promised its supporters yesterday.
Speaking at a rally near the National Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall yesterday afternoon, KMT Chairman Lien Chan (
Lien said the results of Saturday's elections reveal that the people believe in the KMT and its stance on the retention of the national title the Republic of China, and hope for peace across the Taiwan Strait.
"Cross-strait relations are grim because the ruling administration cannot deal with its problems," Lien said yesterday.
The KMT does not support the extremes of either Taiwanese independence or reunification between China and Taiwan, Lien said, but rather stands for the status quo. Both China and Taiwan should set aside political conflicts and actively begin the process of negotiations to ensure a win-win situation in the Strait.
Lien has previously said that the KMT supports negotiations within the boundaries of the status quo.
Lien also urged President Chen Shui-bian (
Lien was upbeat on the planned merger of the pan-blue camp, stressing that the merger will go through as the camp has been promising since its defeat in the March presidential elections.
New Party Chairman Yok Mu-ming (
"It is the hope of many supporters that the pan-blues unite. The pan-blue camp must unite and consolidate, we must cooperate and merge," Yok said.
Noticeably absent from the rally, however, was the third member of the pan-blue camp, the People First Party (PFP). While the KMT's plans for the rally had not included the PFP, the KMT extended an invitation to the party Friday, in a last-minute attempt at unity.
Since the party's poor showing in the legislative elections, its chairman James Soong (
Despite the KMT's invitation, the PFP yesterday declined to attend the rally, stating that many of its party members already had other plans given the lateness of the invitation.
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