The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) celebrated the 21st anniversary yesterday of its founding with a cocktail party presided over by President Chen Shui-bian (
The celebration, which took place at the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel and drew a number of representatives from foreign missions stationed in Taiwan, was overshadowed by the absence of party chairman Yu Shyi-kun, however.
Yu resigned at around midnight on Wednesday night to protest against the party's passage of a moderate "normal country" resolution, which was approved by the DPP Central Executive Committee on Thursday.
PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and his running mate, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), also did not attend.
When approached by reporters, Hsieh's campaign manager Lee Ying-yuan (
DPP Secretary-General Lin Chia-lung (
It was not clear whether the president had arranged a meeting to coordinate talks between Yu and Hsieh yesterday.
Yu's resignation on Wednesday caught many in the DPP off-guard because Yu, who promised to step down over his indictment on Sept. 21 for allegedly misusing his special allowance fund, had said he would stay on as DPP chairman until the party's national congress, which begins tomorrow.
Yu had said on Wednesday that he, Hsieh, Chen and DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (
They agreed to amend the draft, which originally stated that "the nation should correct its name and write a new constitution as soon as possible," by stipulating that the nation should "accomplish rectification of `Taiwan' as soon as possible and write a new constitution."
At a press conference on Thursday, however, Yu said that he had felt there was no choice but to agree to the consensus, which he called "ambiguous."
"As the party chairman, I've lost the freedom to embrace expectations and dreams for Taiwan," Yu said on Thursday, adding that removing concrete articles stipulating "Taiwan" as the national title had stripped away the spirit of the resolution.
In response to Yu's abrupt resignation, Hsieh said on Thursday that the government had the responsibility to thoroughly review possible consequences before proposing a major policy.
When asked for comment yesterday, Huang Ching-lin (
"If the president had not decided to come [to the reception,] I would not have come, either," 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
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