Former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin Yi-xiong (林義雄) is to have a role in the new party being established by Former Judicial Reform Foundation executive director Lin Feng-jeng (林峰正) that he says will be set up in time to contest the 2016 presidential and legislative elections.
With seven years of experience as the foundation’s director, Lin Feng-jeng said his new party will seize the elections as an opportunity to promote its ideals and use them as a stage from which to propose its version of the policies, vision and direction the nation needs.
Earlier last month, Lin Feng-jeng said that the time is ripe for the politicization of Taiwan’s social movements.
Citing the foundation he headed as an example, he said that despite being an influential non-governmental organization on judicial matters, the foundation has been rather toothless in ensuring that the policies it favors are legislated and implemented.
Taiwan’s existing social movement model is inadequate, Lin Feng-jeng said, adding that a new model has to be created if political parties are to be forced to compete constructively.
As for the role that Lin Yi-xiong is to play in the new political entity, Lin Feng-jeng said the former DPP chairman will help establish and participate in the party, but will not represent it in elections.
He said that Lin Yi-xiong believes that the party-member system adopted by the DPP will not be used in the new party, since that method only generates large numbers of nominal party members.
A political party is a group of people who share the same political ideals and try to influence the public to those ends, Lin Feng-jeng said.
Lin Feng-jeng said that given that the DPP had failed to initiate internal reforms, the new party will provide new opportunities for politicians with vision to help change the political landscape.
However, attracting votes solely from the pan-green base would be meaningless for the new party, Lin Feng-jeng said.
Given President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) failing performance, some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supporters will likely be unwilling to vote for the KMT in 2016, just as some pan-green supporters did not back the DPP in 2008, he said.
Lin Feng-jeng’s announcement about Lin Yi-xiong elicited a lukewarm reaction among DPP leaders.
When asked yesterday about Lin Yi-xiong’s role in a new party that some DPP legislators worry might take votes away from the DPP, former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said it is “not all bad.”
“As long as we have similar political visions and feel the same kind of responsibility toward Taiwan, I believe there is a possibility of integration,” Tsai said.
“The DPP is a political party that is subject to certain constraints in the role it plays. If there are different groups in the opposition fighting for shared ideals, that is not all bad,” she said.
Former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃), who will be the DPP’s candidate in the New Taipei City (新北市) mayoral election in November, agreed with Tsai, saying that there is room for cooperation between the DPP and like-minded people and parties.
It might be that the two groups “share the same goal and ideals, but have different strategies for achieving those ends,” Yu said. “We should respect every group and person’s individual choices.”
DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) would not comment when he was asked by the media about the new party, but did say that the DPP has to work harder to hold the Ma administration accountable for its poor performance.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power
RSS