The pro-independence Taiwan Nation Alliance (TNA) is to stage a “mega event” to further boost morale for the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) presidential and legislative election campaigns at the end of the year, planning to hold major parades in the six special municipalities and inviting former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to be the convener-in-chief.
The alliance is said to have resolved through its central committee to hold the event, with the aim to giving its full support to DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for the restoration of a Taiwan-centered administration, and to the legislative candidates of the DPP, the Taiwan Solidarity Union and other “third political forces” to help them secure a majority in the legislature.
According to the group’s preliminary plan, the parades will take place in the six special municipalities, with the one in Taipei splitting into three major courses marching from Wanhua Train Station, Jhongxiao E Road and Daan Forest Park and converging finally on Ketagalan Boulevard.
The Taipei parade is scheduled to feature live exchanges on screens with the parades taking place in New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung, according to the plan, and the event might also be expanded further to include other cities.
The Taiwan Nation Alliance, an alliance consisting of dozens of Taiwan-centered groups, was previously known as the Hand-in-Hand Taiwan Alliance.
With Lee as the convener-in-chief it staged a Hand-in-Hand Rally on Feb. 28, 2004 that created momentum and helped former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) win re-election that year.
The alliance has decided to invite Lee to again act as the chief convener of the event scheduled to take place in December.
TNA chairman Wu Shu-min (吳樹民), secretary-general Wei Jui-ming (魏瑞明), executive member and former DPP chairman Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文) and several other alliance members visited the former president on Monday.
Lee, according to a source, said he considers Tsai to have even brighter prospects in next year’s election after Deputy Legislative Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) emerged as the presumptive Chinese Nationalist Party presidential nominee.
Lee said he highly approves of the staging of the event in December, adding that the presidential election should not be the only focus of its endeavor, because winning a majority in the legislature is equally important.
For that reason, any coordination has to be made with the DPP legislative candidates of respective electoral districts for the planning of the major parades to be held at the local level to mobilize and call out more participants, he said.
Wei said that because Lee has now agreed to be the event’s convener-in-chief, the alliance will soon visit Tsai to invite the DPP to co-host the rally.
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