The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday supported the judicial inquiry into the Papua New Guinea diplomatic fund scandal and said its anti-corruption committee would launch an investigation to get to the bottom of the matter.
DPP Chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said that it was the consensus of the party’s extraordinary National Congress that they “will not harbor evildoers and cover up their evil deeds.”
“Corruption is one of the main reasons for our recent election defeats,” he said. “We must reflect on ourselves, upgrade the function of the anti-corruption committee and mete out punishment to party members committing graft in a definite and speedy manner.”
Yesterday’s extraordinary National Congress, which was called to discuss the DPP’s recent election losses, turned out to be a talking shop due to the lack of a quorum.
Participants talked about the 11 proposals, which will be sent to the Central Executive Committee meeting for deliberation and then the new National Congress. The new congress is scheduled to be elected on May 18 and meet in July.
Hsieh said he regretted few people turned up yesterday and that he thought most party members have not yet emerged from their election gloom.
“While individual party members are licking their wounds, I hope the entire party will stand up on its feet again by helping each other,” he said.
The fund scandal also played a role in representatives’ unwillingness to attend yesterday’s meeting, Hsieh said.
Describing the scandal as “embarrassing,” former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), Hsieh’s running mate in the presidential election, told reporters after the meeting that he felt sorry that only a few members had shown up for yesterday’s meeting.
Su said he supposed most members were still upset about the election defeat and have not found the will to jump into action.
The three candidates vying for the party chief were invited to deliver addresses at the congress, amid calls for an end to factional infighting and immediate negotiation with the three to produce one candidate.
Former senior presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏) called for unity and cooperation, saying that he would like to work together with the other two.
The 82-year-old said that he has never stood in any election before nor did he care about party affairs. The reason he joined the race was because the DPP lost three major elections and he worried that the DPP must act as a check on the power of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which will soon control the executive and legislative branches.
He promised, if elected, to spend two years soliciting first-hand opinions by visiting party charters to restore the public’s trust in the party.
Former vice premier Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said the party must continue to insist on Taiwan’s sovereignty and dignity, deepen its democracy and pursue reform and progression.
Noting the bumpy road ahead, Tsai said the party must develop a more sophisticated political discourse that takes into consideration China’s increasing influence in the region and the world.
The party must recover its core values, consolidate its support base and secure more backers. Faced with the KMT’s majority government and legislature, the party must oversee with professionalism and transparency.
DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) praised his negotiation skills and extensive experience in elections. He proposed holding government-funded primaries for all political parties and encouraging party members to provide more service to grassroots supporters.
If elected, he said he would make an effort to promote the party’s pro-independence rhetoric to the world.
He insinuated that Tsai Ing-wen was the candidate backed by party factions and her victory would only worsen factional infighting.
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