Following a series of disputes on negotiations between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and alternative political groups over cross-party collaborations in the coming legislative election, DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) voiced her willingness to make more concessions.
“To have the forces of reform occupy more than 50 percent of the seats in the legislature, we must endorse the most competitive candidate in each electoral district. It is the DPP’s responsibility and the DPP’s rule of thumb in endorsing candidates,” Tsai said during a speech to the Taiwanese-American community in New York City on Friday during a 12-day visit to the US.
“When there is a candidate in the progressive camp who is most likely to win, of course the person does not have to be nominated by the DPP,” she said.
“If we can yield in the Taipei mayoral election, what else can we not yield?” Tsai added, referring to the DPP’s decision against nominating a candidate last year in the Taipei mayoral election.
The party threw its support behind independent then-candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who ultimately won a landslide victory.
Tsai said the DPP would establish a competitive, yet cooperative, relationship with other parties that hold common ideas, so that progressive political forces could stand united for a bigger objective.
Tsai was responding to recent criticism from veteran political activist Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) and politicians representing alternative political groups.
The critics said that, while the DPP agreed to yield seats to third-party political candidates, it is not conceding enough.
Tsai said that while she feels “a little saddened” by some of Lin’s words, she understands that it is because Lin has high expectations for Taiwan’s future and its democracy.
The Council of Agriculture yesterday signed a Taiwan-Australia Agricultural Cooperation Implementation clause to open a new export market for the nation’s pineapple crop. The clause is an addition to existing cooperation measures, it said. China on Friday last week abruptly announced that it would suspend pineapple imports from Taiwan starting on Monday, on grounds that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful organisms” in shipments of the fruit. The public and private sectors have since joined hands to purchase the local fruit to help the nation’s pineapple farmers. Canberra has requested that all pineapples for export to Australia have their crown buds removed,
A Tainan taxi driver is the Taiwanese with the longest name, after he last month changed it so that it now contains 25 characters, the Anping District Household Registration Office said. The 47-year-old man, formerly known as Huang Hsin-hsiang (黃鑫翔), applied for the name change on Feb. 26, in the hope that it would bring him good luck. His new name starts with Huang Da-lan (黃大嵐) and adds another 22 characters, meaning “Huang Da-lan is the blessed darling and sweetheart of the god of joy, god of wealth, god of misfortune, god of Earth and all the gods,” it said. With
POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECTS: As China attempted to promote its national image through humanitarian aid, its targets include New Southbound Policy countries, an expert said China’s “vaccine diplomacy,” which has become central to its foreign policy this year, might hamper Taiwan’s efforts to build relations with developing countries, an expert said. “China, as one of the few countries other than the United Kingdom and the United States to have produced a COVID-19 vaccine, will certainly use that as a diplomatic tool,” said Kung Shan-son (龔祥生), an assistant research fellow at the government-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research. Beijing’s major goals in its “vaccine diplomacy” are to promote its national image through humanitarian aid and to solidify its relations with countries that are included in its
Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group might have lost its right to distribute the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19 and the ability to fulfill a contract in Taiwan, civic groups Taiwan Citizen Front and the Economic Democracy Union said yesterday. In a radio interview on Feb. 17, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the Central Epidemic Command Center, said that last year, Taiwan was close to signing a contract to buy doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but that the deal was halted at the last moment, with some speculating that Chinese interference was to blame. On Monday last week, the center