Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said he opposed forcing former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) out of the year-end elections, while expressing support for an election bid by DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Chen’s secretary, Chiang Chih-ming (江志銘), said the former president complained that no one in the DPP came out to defend Hsieh when he was attacked by the pro-unification media and portrayed as a traitor during the Martial Law era.
“Since [former] chairman Hsieh already denied the allegation, the DPP must fully support him as a candidate in the elections,” Chiang quoted Chen as saying after visiting Chen at the Taipei Detention Center in Tucheng (土城), Taipei County.
Elections for the heads of five special municipalities will take place on Nov. 27 in Taipei City, Sinbei City (新北市, the upgraded Taipei County), Greater Taichung (a merger of Taichung City and Taichung County), Greater Tainan (a merger of Tainan City and Tainan County) and Greater Kaohsiung (a merger of Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County).
Chen also expressed a wish to see Tsai stand in the election for Sinbei City in November.
Chiang said Chen was worried about the Sinbei City election, which he believes is key to the year-end elections and said that the party must nominate whoever has the best chance of winning.
“If Chairwoman Tsai is the best candidate, there is no harm in running in the race as party chairwoman,” Chiang quoted Chen as saying. “‘If the person with the best chance of winning doesn’t want to run, how does the party expect that person to lead its return to power?”
Chiang said Chen very much hoped to see the party unite and party members refrain from infighting, having only just recovered from its previous election defeats.
Meanwhile, Chen urged his supporters to back the referendum proposal initiated by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) on whether to sign an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) with Beijing.
As the DPP has pledged to collect 50,000 signatures, Chen urged his supporters to gather 10,000. Chen himself will also sign the petition, Chiang said.
The TSU must amass at least 86,000 signatures to file a petition to hold a referendum. Once the proposal is approved by the Cabinet’s Referendum Review Committee, the party must then collect more than 1 million endorsements for the referendum to take place.
The TSU’s referendum proposal came after the review committee rejected a similar proposal from the DPP.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday voiced dissatisfaction with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), whose latest meeting, concluded earlier the same day, appeared not to address the country’s application. In a statement, MOFA said the CPTPP commission had "once again failed to fairly process Taiwan’s application," attributing the inaction to the bloc’s "succumbing to political pressure," without elaborating. Taiwan submitted its CPTPP application under the name "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu" on Sept. 22, 2021 -- less than a week after China
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,
THE GOOD WORD: More than 100 colleges on both sides of the Pacific will work together to bring students to Taiwan so they can learn Mandarin where it is spoken A total of 102 universities from Taiwan and the US are collaborating in a push to promote Taiwan as the first-choice place to learn Mandarin, with seven Mandarin learning centers stood up in the US to train and support teachers, the Foundation for International Cooperation in Higher Education of Taiwan (FICHET) said. At the annual convention of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages held over the weekend in New Orleans, Louisiana, a Taiwan Pavilion was jointly run by 17 representative teams from the FICHET, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, the Steering Committee for the Test of Proficiency-Huayu, the
A home-style restaurant opened by a Taiwanese woman in Quezon City in Metro Manila has been featured in the first-ever Michelin Guide honoring exceptional restaurants in the Philippines. The restaurant, Fong Wei Wu (豐味屋), was one of 74 eateries to receive a “Michelin Selected” honor in the guide, while one restaurant received two Michelin stars, eight received one star and 25 were awarded a “Bib Gourmand.” The guide, which was limited to restaurants in Metro Manila and Cebu, was published on Oct. 30. In an interview, Feng Wei Wu’s owner and chef, Linda, said that as a restaurateur in her 60s, receiving an
RSS