Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who is vying for the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) presidential primary, yesterday said he believed the party should recognize and accept the Constitution before seeking to amend or abolish it.
Hsieh, who has been under attack from the DPP's other three presidential contenders and their supporters for a previous comment that a "one China" framework exists in the Constitution, defended himself to reporters before giving a speech at a Taipei church yesterday.
Hsieh told reporters that the dispute about whether or not the party should accept the Constitution, in which the nation's title is the Republic of China (ROC), had been settled by the party when it passed its Resolutions on Taiwan's Future in 1999 during former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung's (
The resolutions say that "Taiwan, although still called the Republic of China according to the current Constitution, does not belong to China. Any change to the status quo and independence must be decided by the Taiwanese people through a referendum."
USING `THE ROC'
"In the past, we said Taiwan was not yet an independent country and that we needed to establish the Republic of Taiwan, but now we say Taiwan is an independent state and is called the ROC by the Constitution. We are actually temporarily using the name `ROC' for our own purposes," he said.
"How are we going to run for the presidency if we do not recognize the title? My fellow DPP members all forget to mention that our 26 [24] diplomatic allies also refer to Taiwan as the ROC," he said.
He said the current debate centered around whether the party should instead deny that "ROC" is the nation's name. He said the party should seek to amend the Constitution no matter how difficult it is, because 70 percent of the population identify themselves with Taiwan, not China.
"I have explained my stance on the `one China' framework issue before. I can't help it if my rivals do not understand my idea," he said.
Hsieh said the DPP should win 75 percent of the vote in next year's presidential election and should examine itself if it secures a lower percentage.
SU-HUA FREEWAY
When asked for comments on the President Chen Shui-bian's (
"The president promised to build the freeway [in his re-election campaign platform] to promote regional development. He also made the promise out of the request of local residents [in eastern Taiwan]. However, the construction project should pass the ecological review first," he said.
Hsieh said, however, during his term as premier, he believed it would be "very difficult" for the project to pass the review.
As a result, he proposed an alternative to building the freeway, the "Pioneering Project of Eastern Taiwan," which recommended relying on subsidies to promote industries in the east that reflect local culture, he said.
"The Democratic Progressive Party should promote construction in eastern Taiwan," he said. "We should not give the impression to people in eastern Taiwan that we treat them badly."
"Since eastern Taiwan has a small population, it would be very easy for the NT$90 billion [US$2.7 billion] budget allotted to the Su-Hua Freeway project to `vanish' [be put to other uses] if the government can find an excuse," he 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
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
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