The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is scheduled to elect a new party chief on May 25, following the resignation of Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), who is expected to step down as chairman today.
The DPP's Central Standing Committee will meet today to elect an acting chair to fill the vacancy until May 25.
Hsieh spokesman Chao Tien-lin (
PHOTO: LIN CHENG-KUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Shortly after his loss in the presidential election on Saturday night, Hsieh told reporters that he would "keep every promise" he had made in the run-up to the election.
Hsieh had vowed to quit politics if he lost the presidential election. It is also customary at the DPP for the party chairman to bear responsibility for an election loss by resigning.
Hsieh succeeded President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) as party chairman following the DPP's losses in the legislative elections in January.
Vice President Annette Lu (
"You don't need to guess whether I will contest the race, because I won't," she said. "I won't be a member of the Central Standing Committee once I leave office."
Lu made the remarks while officiating at the inauguration of 157 new DPP members at party headquarters yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday's Chinese-language China Times insinuated that the ceremony, which had been initiated by Lu, was her attempt to drum up support for a chairmanship bid.
But Lu said that the event had originally been scheduled to take place before Feb. 28, but was postponed because of the election.
Describing the DPP as "the eldest grandson of Taiwan's democracy," Lu said the 22-year-old party was sick and needed to see a doctor, take medicine and regain its health.
"We must take a good look at ourselves and get back on our feet again," she said. "We don't have time to feel sorry or lose heart."
Lu proposed the establishment of a taskforce to reform party affairs and amend certain internal rules in response to the new situation.
She also asked the public to give the DPP time to do some soul searching and select a new leader, and urged the media to refrain from selecting a chairman for the party.
"I hope the new chairman is creative, makes a breakthrough in party affairs and responds to the new challenges," she said.
Meanwhile, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (
Chang said he told Chen that whether the party would be able to recover depended on whether senior party members were willing to hand over power to the party's younger generation.
The premier made the comment during a question-and-answer session with KMT Legislator Lee Ching-hua (
Chang said Ma's margin of victory had come as a surprise, but added that the DPP, including "everyone who has participated in government over the past eight years," should humbly accept the result.
He said he also told the president that he would not run for the party chairmanship.
Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) suggested that the party's leadership be handed over to the "student movement generation," referring to the Young Turks who participated in Taiwan's student movement in the 1980s and 1990s.
"It's time for a change of generations," Su said, as the Formosa generation "were knocked off their pedestals by the Taiwanese people" in Saturday's election.
The Formosa generation refers to the DPP politicians who were jailed for their part in the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979, a pro-democracy demonstration against the former KMT regime, and those who defended them in court.
"It would be appropriate for former DPP legislator Luo Wen-chia (
"As the [Chinese] proverb says, he who is successful in a revolt becomes a king, and he who fails in such an attempt becomes a bandit. The Formosa generation are old; they should share their experience with the next generation," Su said.
The election result did not mean that Taiwanese have lost faith in the DPP's Taiwan-centric path, Su said.
"The problem lies in the party's implementation of the policy," he said. "For example, the DPP enshrined the idea of sustainable development. But when it was in power, it advocated the Suhua Freeway project, which contradicted that. That is what led to the party's failure."
"There were lots of reasons, not a single incident, that contributed to the defeat. [The DPP's loss] is not an overnight phenomenon," Su said.
Also yesterday, Kuo Cheng-deng (
He described the move as "long overdue."
"But it's better late than never," he said.
Additional reporting by Flora Wang
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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