The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) leadership for the next two years took shape yesterday during elections at the annual congress as DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) gained an ability to influence the party’s power structure for the first time.
Tsai, who neither established her own alliance nor became affiliated with any grouping when she served as chairperson between 2008 and 2012, yesterday saw allies voted onto the party’s key decisionmaking bodies — the Central Executive Committee and the Central Standing Committee.
While Tsai has been reluctant to recognize her “special circle” as a faction, she now has five allies among the 30 elected members of the Central Executive Committee and two confidants — DPP Legislator Chen Ming-wen (陳明文) and her former presidential running mate, Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) — among the 10 elected members of the Central Standing Committee.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
This will make it easier for Tsai to consolidate her power in the party and to initiate proposals or defend her policies.
It also highlighted Su Jia-chyuan’s official return to the party’s power structure after a hiatus for almost two years since the 2012 presidential election and the controversy over a residence he built on land zoned solely for agricultural use in Pingtung County.
The biennial elections for the Central Executive Committee, the Central Standing Committee and the Central Review Committee, which oversees the DPP’s internal affairs, were held during yesterday’s congress.
The Central Standing Committee, the DPP’s highest decisionmaking body, has 17 members: the chairperson, three DPP caucus executives, three mayors and 10 elected members — who are chosen from among the 30-person Central Executive Committee.
Almost all the DPP’s former factions fared equally winning seats on the Central Standing Committee. The former New Tide faction won two seats, as did a “faction” of Tsai, Yu and Hsieh, while former DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) faction won one seat, as did the Green Friendship Alliance.
The same balanced of power is now found on the Central Executive Committee after the election, with New Tide and the Tsai-Yu-Hsieh side each winning five seats, followed by Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu’s (陳菊) faction, which has four seats. Su’s faction and the Green Friendship Alliance each won three seats.
Central Executive Committee member Hung Chi-kune (洪智坤) failed to win re-elected due to a lack of support from any faction.
Eleven Central Review Committee members were also elected.
The DPP voted to ban party factions during its national congress in June 2006, though the groupings are still recognized by many people inside and out of the party.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) banned party factions in January 2008.
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