Coming on the heels of pan-green camp's rallies to protest against China's proposed "anti-secession" law, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is mulling over a plan to mobilize its supporters on March 19 to challenge the re-election of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) last March.
At what the party calls "the anniversary of March 19," the KMT plans to hold a large-scale protest.
"March 19 is a day that brought much harm and shame to Taiwan's democracy," said KMT spokeswoman Cheng Li-wen (鄭麗文).
"Most of our supporters hope we will have concrete action to voice our opposition on the day," Cheng added.
Meanwhile, KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) is expected to issue a statement calling for changeover in the party leadership next week as the party finalizes a timetable for its chairmanship election set for May, officials said yesterday.
The KMT will pass a proposed schedule for the election during its weekly Central Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday.
According to the plan, the KMT will release an announcement on the chairmanship election on March 21, make known the names of candidates and their serial numbers on April 28 and hold the vote on May 28.
Although Lien will not directly say that he will "not continue in the chairmanship," he will call for "generational transition" and encourage interested parties to take part in the election during the meeting, according to sources close to Lien. Legislative Yuan speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who serves as a vice chairman of the KMT, has said that he will run for the chairmanship if Lien decides not to seek re-election.
Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), another KMT vice chairman, has also announced his bid for the chairmanship.
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