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Post-Election 2008: DPP supporters to meet on Saturday to `heal pain'

As supporters of president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) celebrated his victory in Saturday's presidential election, Internet users who supported Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) were calling for a gathering of like-minded people to air their desolation and "heal the pain."

"I want to offer a way for pan-green Internet users to air their feelings because they can't do it out on the streets," two bloggers, using the nicknames Dugumu (獨孤木) and BillyPan, wrote on their blogs.

"The red-clad army can go on the street and turn Ketagalan Boulevard into a night market," an entry said, referring to the campaign launched by former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh (施明德) with a month-long sit-in in front of the Presidential Office calling on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to step down. "But friends of the pan-green camp who lost the election can only swallow their tears and unwillingness [to accept the results]."

The gathering is titled "an Internet gathering to recall 2 million hearts," as Ma won 2.2 million votes more than Hsieh.

"Besides providing an opportunity for supporters of the pan-green camp to heal their pain, an important reason to hold the gathering is to allow pan-green political bloggers to meet and encourage each other," BillyPan wrote.

"Maybe we can try to develop a way to coordinate -- I wouldn't want to see young people become indifferent to politics again after the election," he wrote. "The age of political comment blogs has just begun."

The get-together proposal received a lot of feedback from Internet users and the news was posted on many local blogs.

The gathering is scheduled to be held in Taipei on Saturday. However, the exact location has yet to be determined, because "the number of people wanting to participate has become too overwhelming and thus we have to change the venue," Dugumu wrote on his blog.

Additional reporting by Hsieh Wen-hua
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