Political pressures were likely behind the Taipei City Government's change of heart in publicizing an estimate of the size of the crowds that attended Saturday's pro-President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) rally on Ketagalan Boulevard, a political observer said.
"The city police are under a tremendous amount of pressure whether they make public the number or not," said Wang Kung-yi (
However, once they decide not to offer a figure, they should not change their position, he said.
PHOTO: CHEN TSE-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
He said that pressure could have come from both the Taiwan Society, which orchestrated the pro-Chen rally, and the anti-Chen group led by former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Shih Ming-teh (
Taipei police authorities originally refused to reveal an estimate of the number of people who attended Sat-urday's rally on the boulevard, saying that there was always a large discrepancy between crowd figures estimated by event organizers and those estimated by authorities.
However, they changed their mind later Saturday night and announced that about 55,000 people had turned up. The rally organizers put the number at more than 200,000.
Wang said that turnout was important in demonstrations orga-nized by private groups such as the Taiwan Society or Shih's group.
"Privately organized demonstrations are unlike rallies organized on the eve of elections, where candidates know the result the following day," he said. "For private organizers, the number of participants signifies power."
There is often a wide disparity between estimates given by event organizers and city police.
On Friday night, when Shih's camp staged a "siege" march from in front of the Presidential Office to the Taipei Railway Station, the organizers estimated that more than 1 million people turned up, but police had a much lower estimate of 320,000 to 360,000.
Earlier on Sept. 9, the day when the around-the-clock anti-Chen sit-in began, the organizer claimed that the turnout was 300,000, but city police put the number at around 100,000.
The next day, despite the fact that there were visibly smaller crowds than on Saturday, the organizers of the anti-Chen protest claimed that even more people showed up than on the first day of the sit-in.
They said that 500,000 protesters had shown up, while city police estimated the crowd at 10,000 people.
Lin Ming-hua (
The demonstration was orchestrated to demand the "truth" about the election-eve assassination attempt, which many pan-blue supporters believe was staged by Chen despite any solid evidence to back up their theories.
Lin said that the city police originally refused to publicize the number of participants in Satur-day's rally on Ketagalan Boulevard, but they were told by the police chief at around 10:45pm to make it public.
Lin said that the official numbers were reliable because they were calculated using a formula.
Taking Friday's "siege" march as an example, Lin said that police estimated 40,000 people could fill 1km of the road that protesters walked down. As the march stretched more than 5.5km, the police estimated that about 220,000 people were on the street. On top of that number, city authorities figured that about 140,000 more were scattered along Ketagalan Boulevard and elsewhere, making the total number 360,000.
Regarding Saturday's pro-Chen rally, Lin said that their estimate was that 20,000 to 30,000 people filled Ketagalan Boulevard from Chongqing South Road to Gongyuan Road.
About 25,000 more were added because demonstrators spilled over to Jing Fu Men (景福門), the traditional-style gate in the traffic circle at one end of the boulevard.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS