The Green Party Taiwan and Social Democratic Party (SDP) yesterday said they would register a “Green-SDP Alliance” party with the Ministry of the Interior to field a joint slate of at-large candidates in January’s legislative elections.
Green Party conveners Lee Ken-cheng (李根政) and Chang Yu-ching (張育憬) shook hands with SDP convener Fan Yun (范雲) at a press conference in Taipei after signing a memorandum of understanding.
Legislative candidates from the two parties stood together promising to “fight together to win for the people.”
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
“Compatriots must stand together, because true strength is found in solidarity,” Lee and Fan Yun both said in their speeches at the event, quoting Taiwanese democracy pioneer Chiang Wei-shui (蔣渭水).
“Taiwan needs a new political force aside from two main political parties, which are both biased towards corporations — a political force that would always stand up to defend land, the weak and human rights,” Lee said. “The Green-SDP Alliance will act as a watchdog and an opposition party.”
While negotiating cooperation had been “difficult,” requiring six months of talks, solidarity was important to both sides, he said.
Fan said the alliance would work to “eliminate” the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) while “balancing” the Democratic Progressive Party by striving to become the “crucial minority” in the Legislative Yuan.
She urged other “progressive social forces” to stand with them in the legislative elections, saying the alliance’s current membership was “insufficient.”
The Green Party Taiwan was founded in 1996 and won two county and city councilor seats in last year’s local elections.
The Social Democratic Party was founded by members of the civic group Taiwan Citizen’s Union (TCU) in March, following disagreements with TCU members who had launched the New Power Party earlier in the year.
Efforts by the Green Party and New Power Party aimed at collaboration failed.
Lee said that while he remained open to “cooperation” with the New Power Party, registration deadlines would make it difficult to include that party in the alliance’s slate of at-large candidates after they officially register the ticket with the interior ministry.
Any cooperation would likely be limited to harmonizing candidates for legislative districts, he said.
“This is a temporary alliance created to participate in the elections,” said Ku Yu-ling (顧玉玲), a former secretary-general of the Taiwan International Workers’ Association, who was invited to witness the signing of the memorandum. “Exactly where they compromise and how they define the basis for their cooperation is very interesting and important.”
While the memorandum calls for joint campaigning and splitting any campaign contributions and subsidies, the two parties have not drafted a common platform or even drawn up a list of candidates.
Parties must attract 5 percent of the national vote to be eligible for an at-large legislative seat.
A report by the Chinese-language Storm Media on opinion polls released last week placed support for the New Power Party at 5.6 percent of respondents, the Green Party at 2.6 percent and the SDP at less than 1 percent.
FOSSIL CLUES: The bushfires resulted from a positive Indian Ocean dipole event, when the region east of the ocean becomes drier, professor Shen Chuan-chou said The bushfires that swept through Australia last year were connected to a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD), which is expected to become more frequent due to climate change, a geologist studying coral fossils said yesterday. National Taiwan University Department of Geosciences professor Shen Chuan-chou (沈川洲) since 2001 has been working with Australian and US researchers to study climate systems in the Indian Ocean. Led by Australian National University Research School of Earth Sciences professor Nerilie Abram, the team published a paper on IOD in the journal Nature on March 9. The bushfires resulted from a positive IOD event, when the
Senior judges yesterday met to discuss the constitutionality of a law that makes adultery a criminal offense, before being ordered by Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) to set a date for a constitutional interpretation within the next month. The judges met to discuss Article 239 of the Criminal Code on offenses against marriage and family, after 18 judges had called for a constitutional interpretation of the issue. Taipei District Court Judge Lin Meng-huang (林孟皇) said that while he had previously tried adultery cases and never questioned the law, his feelings changed when trying a case last year involving baseball star Wang
Instead of hating the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), help change it, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said, as he urged young people to join efforts to reform the party. As the nation marked Youth Day on Sunday, Chiang said in a Facebook post that he wanted to remind people that “the KMT used to be very young.” Now, when people think of the KMT, they equate it with older people, he wrote. “Even if [the KMT] is a 100-year-old party, it must maintain a young mentality, and understand what young people want and what they want the KMT to do,” Chiang wrote.
A survey has found that 37.3 percent of transgender people in the nation have experienced gender-related discrimination or bullying in the workplace, the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights said yesterday. The alliance’s survey showed that 55.41 percent of transgender people said that they had been afraid to use a public restroom, 18.53 percent had been harassed or attacked in public, while 15.83 percent had been afraid to ask a police officer or other professional for help. The survey, conducted from March 14 to Wednesday last week, was based on 518 valid responses from transgender people aged 14 to 78, the
RSS