A 45-year-old radio host set his studio alight and burned himself to death a week after his beloved Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost the presidency to its Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rival. The suicide of Liao Shu-hsin (廖述炘) attracted considerable attention as both supporters and detractors of president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) are carefully weighing the impact of his victory over DPP candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) in the March 22 poll.
Liao’s friends at Voice of the Ocean radio station in Sinjhuang (新莊), Taipei County, said they were convinced that he killed himself out of despair over the election result, and its dire consequences for the DPP and the nation’s sovereignty.
“He felt depressed because Taiwanese elected a Chinese as their president,” colleague Chang Chih-mei (張志梅) said. “A Chinese for him is actually a foreigner.”
Chang said that Liao had also been unhappy with the National Communications Commission, which since last year has been continually confiscating equipment from the Voice of the Ocean’s stations in Taipei, Taoyuan and Taichung.
Throughout the election campaign, Voice of the Ocean and other DPP-allied underground stations beat out a constant drum roll of anti-Ma rhetoric, accusing him of being a pro-China politician ready to sell out the nation’s interests to Beijing.
They were particularly incensed by his support for closer economic ties with China, seeing it as the opening gambit in a carefully planned campaign to bring about unification between the sides.
Ma has said that expanded trade and investment are necessary to help jump-start the nation’s economic engine.
He insists hower that he will not discuss unification during his presidency.
Former DPP legislator Chuang Suo-hang (莊碩漢) said that the party was at a crossroads and that if it wants to return to power, it must moderate its pro-independence message to win the allegiance of key centrist voters.
Chuang and other DPP lawmakers have called for outgoing President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Hsieh to make way for a new generation of reformers, who would maintain the party’s emphasis on Taiwanese identity, while developing practical solutions to boost economic performance.
National Taipei University political scientist Hou Han-chun (侯漢君) said that Hsieh gave a hint of this during his campaign, echoing Ma’s calls for greater economic engagement with China, while insisting he would limit changes to safeguard the interests of economically vulnerable farmers and workers.
Ho said that the president-elect was now faced with the challenge of either improving the economy fast or being punished in four years in the next president election.
“Voters don’t have great patience,” he said. “If the Nationalists [KMT] fail to improve the economy quickly, they will switch to the DPP.”
ALIGNED THINKING: Taiwan and Japan have a mutual interest in trade, culture and engineering, and can work together for stability, Cho Jung-tai said Taiwan and Japan are two like-minded countries willing to work together to form a “safety barrier” in the Indo-Pacific region, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said at the opening ceremony of the 35th Taiwan-Japan Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium in Taipei. Taiwan and Japan are close geographically and closer emotionally, he added. Citing the overflowing of a barrier lake in the Mataian River (馬太鞍溪) in September, Cho said the submersible water level sensors given by Japan during the disaster helped Taiwan monitor the lake’s water levels more accurately. Japan also provided a lot of vaccines early in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic,
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) on Monday announced light shows and themed traffic lights to welcome fans of South Korean pop group Twice to the port city. The group is to play Kaohsiung on Saturday as part of its “This Is For” world tour. It would be the group’s first performance in Taiwan since its debut 10 years ago. The all-female group consists of five South Koreans, three Japanese and Tainan’s Chou Tzu-yu (周子瑜), the first Taiwan-born and raised member of a South Korean girl group. To promote the group’s arrival, the city has been holding a series of events, including a pop-up
TEMPORAL/SPIRITUAL: Beijing’s claim that the next Buddhist leader must come from China is a heavy-handed political maneuver that will fall flat-faced, experts said China’s requirement that the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation to be born in China and approved by Beijing has drawn criticism, with experts at a forum in Taipei yesterday saying that if Beijing were to put forth its own Dalai Lama, the person would not be recognized by the Tibetan Buddhist community. The experts made a remarks at the two-day forum hosted by the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama titled: “The Snow Land Forum: Finding Common Ground on Tibet.” China says it has the right to determine the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation, as it claims sovereignty over Tibet since ancient times,
Temperatures in some parts of Taiwan are expected to fall sharply to lows of 15°C later this week as seasonal northeasterly winds strengthen, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. It is to be the strongest cold wave to affect northern Taiwan this autumn, while Chiayi County in the southwest and some parts of central Taiwan are likely to also see lower temperatures due to radiational cooling, which occurs under conditions of clear skies, light winds and dry weather, the CWA said. Across Taiwan, temperatures are to fall gradually this week, dropping to 15°C to 16°C in the early hours of Wednesday
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