Long-time political activist Shih Ming-te (施明德) yesterday announced his presidential bid, saying that he aimed to bring about cross-strait reconciliation and implement social justice, while lashing out at “conventional” politicians who he said had betrayed the public.
“In each successive administration, we see politicians betraying their ideologies, tearing the nation apart and losing direction,” Shih, a founding member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who broke ties with the party in 2000, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday morning. “There is no leadership in Taiwan, just decisions based on the interaction of power and interests, and the public no longer has any expectations of a new dawn.”
“Along the path of revolution, I have made narrow escapes from the dictator’s knife, and eventually, I knew I would have to engage in a duel with these dirty politicians,” Shih said.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
He promised that, once elected, he would work to bring about reconciliation between the nation’s political parties, as well as between Taiwan and China; he also vowed to realize social justice and put an immediate end to government corruption.
He called for both the Republic of China (ROC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to work together to form a political entity under what he described as a “larger one China” framework, adding that developments in the cross-strait relationship should be based on the reality that the ROC and the PRC are separate political entities.
“The definition of ‘one China’ has been made too narrow, and in reality it is just taken to mean the PRC,” Shih said. “This is something that the 23 million people of the ROC cannot accept, and I propose to replace it with the ‘larger one China’ framework to bring about reconciliation.”
Under the “larger one China” framework, Shih said, the ROC and the PRC would cease being rivals, and would promise not to take military action against each other, while each side would enjoy the right to take part in international organizations and to establish diplomatic ties with other nations.
Shih said he would assign posts in the central government and the state-run businesses to candidates from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the Democratic Progressive Party, elites and people under 39.
“My idea is to put an end to the one-party regime or one-party presidential system, and make the president a truly national president,” Shih said.
He went on to say that he would also seek to modernize the legal system in Taiwan, as most of the laws framed in China by the KMT regime 70 years ago.
However, Shih said that it could take a long time to reform the laws, therefore, he proposed creating legal reform committees overseen by the president, with the participation of progressive civic groups.
“When we have finished the law amendment proposals, we would bypass the malicious Legislative Yuan and put the proposals to direct referendums to allow the public to decide whether to put them into effect,” Shih said.
He said he deliberately picked yesterday to announce his presidential bid because it marked the date on which he was released from prison for the last time 25 years ago.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS