Premier Su Tseng-chang (
Observers in Washington added that Kaohsiung's DPP mayor-elect Chen Chu (
But they dismissed the idea that the electoral victory in Kao-hsiung and the DPP's strong showing in Taipei represented a vindication or groundswell of support for scandal-ridden President Chen Shui-bian (
Rather, they said, it means that DPP supporters remain devoted to the party and its ideals, despite Chen Shui-bian's troubles.
"I think Su is the big winner," said Shelley Rigger, a professor at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, and one of the leading Taiwan scholars in the US.
She reasoned that through the elections and the scandals that preceded them, Su had continued to run the country in a competent manner. Had the DPP lost the election in Kaohsiung, Su might have been forced to step down, Rigger said.
She also pointed to Chen Chu as a big winner, who she described as "a very attractive candidate, a celebrity, a person who is really beloved."
As for Hsieh, Rigger said in an interview with the Taipei Times after appearing at a seminar at the Heritage Foundation on the mayoral elections, he was "in a funny way a winner, too."
"Remember," she said, "Hsieh did not want to run. He was basically drawn into being the candidate. So he lost by a respectable margin. It was the best that could be expected," she said.
Su would gain from his handling of the country's affairs, Rigger said, adding that he was "making some interesting progress in" economics, cross-strait relations, tourism, direct flights with China and the relaxation on business visitors from China.
"Su is running cross-strait policy in a way that will be very appealing to the moderate voter and he's getting to do it without a lot of scrutiny which ... would otherwise be directed at him, because everybody is focused on another place," Rigger said.
Vincent Wang (
Su "is a rising star," Wang said in an interview after the Heritage program.
If the DPP had lost the Kaohsiung election, Su might have been forced to step down, Wang says.
"[Now] he can stay on at his job and he is doing a respectable job as the head of the Cabinet. Also, he has the tactical and strategic support from his new allies, the [DPP's] New Tide [faction] in all the counties and cities of southern Taiwan. So he is definitely one of the contenders, probably the front-runner, in the drive toward the presidential election," Wang said.
Wang also singled out DPP chairman Yu Shyi-kun as having gained from the election results.
"[Yu] can point to Kaohsiung eking out a narrow win as a kind of a victory. And, of course, if the DPP performs respectably next year in the legislative elections, that means that Yu Shyi-kun is an effective campaigner. That will also put him in good stead for 2008," Wang said.
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