Most observers say the student-led movement against the cross-strait service trade pact has dealt a blow to President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, but members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) say the protests have also hurt their parties by making them seem like minor players in the political arena.
Several lawmakers from the DPP and KMT have said they are disappointed with how their parties have handled the crisis as if they were trivial actors on the political stage, a perception which should worry the leaders of Taiwan’s main parties.
At a meeting yesterday, members of the DPP’s Central Standing Committee passed a proposal to form an ad hoc group to discuss reforming the party’s management and the nation’s Constitution.
The anti-pact protests have reinforced Taiwan’s democracy and created new challenges for it that the DPP aims to meet in a responsible manner, DPP officials said.
As the movement draws to an end with student leaders’ promising to vacate the Legislative Yuan chamber they have occupied since March 18 by 6pm today, some KMT lawmakers contend that the worst is over for the ruling party.
These legislators said that backers of the party chaired by Ma would stand firmly behind it to face what they termed the protesters’ “collaboration” with DPP lawmakers.
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said the DPP would not benefit much politically from the Sunflower movement since the demonstrators are “radical supporters of Taiwanese independence” and would press the pan-green party into declaring that Taiwan is separate from China — a position Wu said would be untenable in any electoral campaign.
However, other KMT lawmakers expressed concern that the protests would instead hinder the ruling party at polls, saying that the KMT will have difficulty attracting the youth vote in future elections because its image has been badly tarnished in students’ eyes.
KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said that while the DPP views students as a “political tool,” the KMT sees them as a demographic model of its broad support base.
However, since the ruling party does not offer young members positions of power, nor grooms them for leadership, it is unsurprising that it would have little leverage among students groups in a crisis, he said.
Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) said the Ma administration was to blame for the effects of its failure to defend its policies adequately and giving completely unconvincing responses to the criticisms levelled about the trade pact.
It is not just KMT members who feel disappointed with their party leadership’s handling of the Sunflower movement, DPP Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) said that her party’s incompetence had been highlighted by its playing an almost invisible role throughout the crisis.
Instead of showing leadership, the DPP had been nothing more than a quiet follower, she said.
Former DPP chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) also said the protests had brought the party’s flaws to the fore, adding that it should hold an internal meeting to discuss the lessons that should be learned from the protests if it wants to play a major role in Taiwan’s political arena.
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:
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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