Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday appointed his long-time aide Lin Hsi-yao (林錫耀) as the party’s secretary-general while also making former representative to the US Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) the head of the DPP’s policy-making body.
The appointments — Su’s first since the former premier took over the party helm on May 27 — also included three deputy secretary-generals: former Pingtung County legislator Lin Yu-shen (林育生), who is close to Su; former Tainan County lawmaker Lee Chun-yi (李俊毅) and former DPP spokesperson Lin Yu-chang (林右昌), DPP spokesperson Wang Min-sheng (王閔生) told a press conference.
A long-time colleague of Su’s, Lin Hsi-yao served for five years as deputy commissioner in Taipei County — now known as New Taipei City (新北市) — when Su was the county commissioner between 1997 and 2004. Lin served as the county’s acting commissioner between 2004 and 2005.
Photo: Lee Hsin-fang, Taipei Times
The decision to appoint Wu as director of the DPP’s Policy Research Committee has raised eyebrows and it appears to reflect Su’s intention to improve ties with Washington, Beijing and pro-independence forces within the DPP.
Wu — now a researcher at National Cheng Chi University’s Institute of International Relations — has wide experience handling cross-strait and Taiwan-US relations during DPP administrations and served as chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council between 2004 and 2007. He was Taiwan’s representative to the US between 2007 and 2008.
Su has also made efforts to divide power among major party factions with the appointments of deputy secretary-generals Lee, who is close to former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) and Yu-chang Lin.
Su has sought to nominate the best possible candidates for the positions, Wang said.
More appointments are expected to be unveiled at the Central Standing Committee meeting tomorrow, Wang said.
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: A US Air Force KC-135 tanker came less than 1,000 feet of an EVA plane and was warned off by a Taipei air traffic controller, a report said A US aerial refueling aircraft came very close to an EVA Airways jet in the airspace over southern Taiwan, a military aviation news Web site said. A report published by Alert 5 on Tuesday said that automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B) data captured by planfinder.net on Wednesday last week showed a US Air Force KC-135 tanker “coming less than 1,000 feet [305m] vertically with EVA Air flight BR225 as both aircraft crossed path south of Taiwan” that morning. The report included an audio recording of a female controller from the Taipei air traffic control center telling the unidentified aircraft that it was
A series of discussions on the legacy of martial law and authoritarianism are to be held at the Taipei International Book Exhibition this month, featuring findings and analysis by the Transitional Justice Commission. The commission and publisher Book Republic organized the series, entitled “Escaping the Nation’s Labyrinth of Memory: What Authoritarian Symbols and Records Can Tell Us,” to help people navigate narratives through textual analysis and comparisons with other nations. The four-day series is to begin on Thursday next week with a discussion between commission Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠), Polish-language translator Lin Wei-yun (林蔚昀), and Polish author and artist Pawel Gorecki comparing
MOVING OUT: A former professor said that rent and early education costs in Taipei are the nation’s highest, which makes it difficult for young people to start families The population of Taipei last year fell to the lowest in 23 years due to high rent, more transportation options and the expansion of northern cities into a single metropolis, academics and city officials said on Monday. Data released this month by the Ministry of the Interior showed that the capital was home to 2,602,418 people last year, down 42,623 from 2019. The decline is second only to 1993, when the population fell by 42,828 people, while Taipei’s population was the lowest it has been since 1997. Taipei saw the biggest drop among the six special municipalities, while Taoyuan led the group in
A US aircraft carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt has entered the South China Sea to promote “freedom of the seas,” the US military said yesterday, as tensions between China and Taiwan raise concerns in Washington. US Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that the strike group entered the South China Sea on Saturday, the same day Taiwan reported a large incursion of Chinese bombers and fighter jets into its air defense identification zone near the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島). The US military said the carrier strike group was in the South China Sea, a large part of which
RSS