A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator-at-large, Tsai Huang-liang (
His vacancy will be replaced by former DPP legislator Hsu Jung-shu (
"I'm sure you guys will miss me," Tsai told reporters after a press conference organized to bid farewell to the 45-year-old.
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
Accepting a sword offered by Hsu and a "diploma" presented by DPP caucus whip Lai Ching-te (
Tsai's resignation followed party rules, which require lawmakers to give up their post should they run as candidates in regional elections. His resignation came before the DPP's Central Standing Committee confirmed its nominees for the 16 electoral districts yesterday afternoon.
In addition to Tsai, other candidates for the year-end elections include former minister of justice Chen Ding-nan (
In Yunlin County, former DPP legislator Su Chih-fen (
DPP Legislator Lin Cho-shui (
To be a good caucus leader, Lin said that a person has to be able to negotiate with lawmakers from other parties and government officials.
With his 10-year experience in the legislature, Lin said that he believes Tsai would make a good county commissioner.
Tsai, who entered the political limelight about a decade ago and was elected to the legislature in 1995, said he hopes county residents will give him a chance to serve them and promised to get more funding for local infrastructure projects.
Tsai was born in 1960 into a poor tenant farmer's family of nine in Puli, Nantou County. He graduated from a two-year college program, which was previously affiliated with National Chengchi University and is now affiliated with the National Open University.
The life of the farmer's son took a dramatic turn in 1979 when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime cracked down on an anti-government parade in Kaohsiung organized by Formosa magazine -- a brutal chapter in Taiwan's history later coined the Kaohsiung Incident (美麗島事件).
What the government did to those people made Tsai detest the KMT regime and prompted him to join the democratic movement after completing his military service.
He became a DPP member after the regime lifted a ban on political parties in 1986, but began his political career in 1984 as a township representative in his hometown. In the 18 years following, he has assumed positions ranging from township arbitrator, representative of his colleague Hsu's campaign office in Nantou, to county councilor and lawmaker.
Recalling working with Tsai in the days of the KMT era when the two ran an underground radio station, Hsu described Tsai as an articulate, quick-witted, hard-working and practical person.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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
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
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: