Presidential Office Secretary-General Mark Chen (
"The president has always regarded Lee as a spiritual leader who has made a great contribution to the nation's democratization process," he said.
"I believe that both the public and the president hope that [Lee] will be able to help the country become more democratic," he added.
Mark Chen made the remarks yesterday morning in response to a report in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister paper) under the headline "A-Bian proposes `pan-green alliance,' would let Lee steer."
The report quoted Taiwan Society chairman Wu Shuh-min (
The report said that Chen Shui-bian met with Wu at the Presidential Office last Friday, and that the president had wanted to form a "pan-green alliance" for a while.
Wu told the Taipei Times yesterday that Chen Shui-bian had not used the phrase "pan-green alliance" at their meeting, although the president did propose forming an alliance under Lee's leadership.
Alliance membership would not be limited to pan-green parties, Wu said, and would also extend to private groups.
Wu said that the first time he had heard of the president's idea was about two or three months ago, and that it had nothing to do with the upcoming elections.
When asked whether he thought the idea was feasible, considering that Lee has made no secret of his displeasure with Chen Shui-bian's governance, Wu said he hoped that people who want to see a brighter future for the country would unite in working toward this goal.
Whether such an alliance would be formed, however, hinged on Lee's attitude, Wu said.
He added that he agreed with Lee's statement on Sunday that he was "not a supporter of the pan-green [camp]," but "a supporter of Taiwan."
While Lee seemed to insinuate on Sunday that Chen Shui-bian had a bad upbringing as well as bad taste, giving Chen's governance a failing grade, the Presidential Office officials yesterday downplayed Lee's criticism, saying that different people have different views.
Mark Chen said that he had not heard Lee complain about the president when he visited him on several recent occasions.
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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