With Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) having become the veritable head of the administration following President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) power transfer on Wednesday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Yu Shyi-kun yesterday said the party fully supports the Cabinet and its policies.
Yu made the remarks after the DPP's weekly central standing committee meeting yesterday.
On Wednesday night, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) announced he would delegate executive power and would no longer exercise any powers beyond those the Constitution expressly defines as being the role of the president.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
He also said that he would keep out of the DPP's affairs and would not take part in electioneering.
Chen's announcement rocked the DPP, and reporters asked each committee member their opinion of Chen's decision before they entered or left the meeting room yesterday.
Prior to attending the DPP meeting, Su had a half-hour private discussion with Yu.
In response to Yu's expression of support, Su said the most urgent priority for the DPP and the government was to unite and to reclaim the party's founding spirit.
"I urge all DPP members to work together at this most difficult moment for the party and stop criticizing ourselves," Su said.
Former premier Frank Hsieh (
"The public is not supposed to focus on the release of power, I think self-purification and renewal are important too," Hsieh said.
Hsieh also said it was good that the premier would be given more authority to implement policies and make people's lives better.
"Letting things return to the constitutional system is a good thing. I hope Taiwanese society can gradually get back on a normal track," he added.
As for his absence from a meeting with Chen on Wednesday at the Presidential Office, Hsieh asked the media not to exaggerate the incident, saying that it had not been very convenient for him to arrange a car during the Dragon Boat festival.
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:
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