The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday announced that it will hold a large-scale campaign rally, dubbed "Anti-War for Protecting Taiwan," on Thursday evening to boost party momentum for the upcoming National Assembly elections. The rally will be held in Hsinchuang, Taipei County.
Although the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) was invited to the event, the party criticized the DPP rally as a mere ploy to swindle the public out of their votes.
Showing a DPP rally invitation letter to the media yesterday, TSU Secretary-General Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) slammed the DPP for its flip-flopping in its call to oppose Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Lien Chan's (連戰) China visit at the rally, even though President Chen Shui-bian (
"I want to ask the DPP -- why did you support Lien's trip to China? Why didn't you criticize the agreement reached between Lien and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) as illegal?" Chen said.
"The DPP's strategy in dealing with Lien's visit to China is inconsistent and two-faced," he added.
"We think that the purpose of the DPP rally has less to do with National Assembly elections and more to do with cheating people out of votes by playing on their apathy," Chen said.
Since Lien Chan's first name means "war" in Mandarin, and the DPP rally will take on an "anti-war" theme, the TSU official said the event was an attempted strategy to consolidate support merely by smearing Lien.
Responding to a question from the media, Chen said that TSU officials and lawmakers will go to CKS International Airport to "greet" the KMT chairman as he returns from China this evening.
"We have not encouraged our supporters to go with us because the government is incapable of protecting their safety, and we don't want to see people beaten by gangsters once again," Chen said.
In response to TSU criticism, DPP Secretary-General Lee Yi-yang (
"I think it is unfair to say that [the DPP] cheats people. We are not two-faced at all," Lee said.
Lee also said that Thursday's rally will highlight the DPP's position on the opposition leaders' trips to China, and seek support for constitutional reform.
"The DPP's stand is clear. We firmly oppose Lien's accepting of the non-existent `1992 consensus.' What Lien did in China is just like giving up the deed to a house in exchange for some furniture," Lee said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS