Less than a week after People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
The PFP announced that Soong will lead a PFP/Non-Partisan Solidarity Union think tank, thus leaving him as a political force to be reckoned with.
"Soong is a brave and ambitious man of a particular generation," said Chen Mao-hsiung (
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
When former president Chiang Ching-kuo (
The group sought to limit Lee's power, but Soong helped clear the way for Lee's succession to power.
"Soong made the choice because he knew that he had many rivals on the mainlanders' side. Establishing himself as one of the few mainlanders loyal to Lee would make him second only to Lee should Lee succeed," Chen said.
After serving as Lee's secretary-general of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for four years, Soong was appointed by Lee as governor of Taiwan Province, a level of government holding jurisdiction over most of the country except for the special municipalities of Taipei and Kaohsiung, in 1993. He was then elected governor the next year with 56 percent of the vote, or 4.7 million votes.
During his five-year governorship, Soong toured the country extensively and built a reputation as a potential presidential candidate.
"He was a hard-working governor who cared about people, always showing concern for the sufferings of individuals," said Lee Hung-yuan (李鴻源), a deputy commissioner of the Taipei County Government.
"Soong not only kept a close watch on how his staff were doing but also helped us solve problems should we encounter any," he added, having been in charge of the water resource department of the last two years of Soong's governorship.
Director of the department of information of the Taipei County Government Yang Ko-hua (
"Soong had a mobile office -- a vehicle that carried him around. Upon finishing an inspection, he called his government staffers telling them how to deal with the problems he had just learned about as soon as he got back to his vehicle," said Yang, who was then a political reporter.
The image of "a capable person," as Sooong often labeled himself, however, was not enough to get him elected president -- he failed in the 2000 presidential election as an independent candidate and in 2004 when he ran as vice presidential candidate to the KMT's Lien Chan (連戰).
Soong's recent defeat in the Taipei mayoral election, when he received a mere 4.1 percent of the vote, caused him to announce the end of his political career.
Commenting on Soong's fall, Chen Yi-shen (
"When Soong has been competing with KMT [former chairman] Lien Chan in showing off people who has better relationship with China, how could Soong, unacceptable to pan-green supporters and abandoned by pan-blue supporters, get elected?" he said.
Chen Yi-shen said KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) had successfully turned the KMT into pro-unificationist's only choice, a phenomenon that began in the post-Lee [Teng-hui] era of the party.
"Even [Legislative Speaker] Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) needed to declare that he opposed Taiwan's independence when he ran in the election for KMT chairman [last year], proving that it would only get harder for the PFP to attract pan-blue supporters," he said.
But Ger Yeong-kuang (
"For one thing, there was a structural problem in the case of single-seat elections. For another, there was a problem of campaign strategy," he said.
Ger said the KMT and PFP should learn to concentrate on campaign issues concerning public policies so that the pro-unification versus pro-independence debate won't always be the only issue.
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