With the year-end local-government elections approaching, the idea of a "new Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) movement" could be interpreted as campaign rhetoric by the party's younger generation, but it also reflects the party's growing internal divisions since taking power, a problem that needs a timely cure, political analysts said.
While responding to voters' questions about the DPP forfeiting its ideals and the government's barely satisfactory performance, the party's candidate for Taipei County commissioner, Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉), and former legislator Tuan Yi-kang (段宜康), last week proposed the party launch a "new DPP movement." They argued the party should closely examine problems that have developed over the past six years.
Spirit
Luo and Tuan said the DPP has to rekindle its founding spirit and passion, which they claimed has waned since the DPP came to power in 2000.
Both urged President Chen Shui-bian (
"It is apparent that Luo's proposal is made out of campaign considerations, with Luo aiming to highlight his reform image within the DPP and win more neutral voters," Hsu Yung-ming (
Hsu noted that, according to recent polls, Luo and his opponent, Chou Hsi-wei (
"Luo's new DPP movement might help differentiate him from the DPP's older generation and increase voter recognition to a certain degree," Hsu said. "Bringing up reform issues will inevitably trigger a series of conflicts within the DPP's factions; whether the movement will be effective remains to be seen," Hsu said.
Although Luo has faced vehement criticism from DPP lawmakers and senior members over his comments, the idea of the "new DPP movement" shows that the DPP is at a point where it needs to look at its political stances and governing policies, Hsu said.
DPP Legislator Wang Tuoh (王拓), who on Monday announced he would withdraw from the Keelung mayoral election, agreed with Hsu's points. He said he felt deeply that the party has been in need of a profound self-examination since taking power.
Internal reform
"To be frank, I think the DPP has to reform itself first if it really wants to conduct reform within the governmental departments," Wang said.
Wang said he had withdrawn from the Keelung race partly because he saw that DPP supporters' passion was flagging, because the government failed once again to fulfill public expectations. He had a hard time arousing people's enthusiasm for the party, he said.
"Some of the government's inappropriate policy-making and inadequate distribution of resources has let our supporters down and made them distrustful of the government," Wang said.
Chin Heng-wei (金恆煒), editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine, said that the biggest problem for the DPP is that it has failed to meet public expectations that it would eradicate the party-state system left behind by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Additionally, many old government injustices have not been corrected since the DPP became the ruling party, he said.
"The DPP did not transform its structure and it seems to have maintained the mindset of an opposition party," Chin said.
"The new DPP movement might be a chance for the DPP to scrutinize its problems and find a cure for them," Chin added.
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
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