The Republican Party yesterday flexed its organizational muscles with a massive rally along Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei.
Following hours of performances and speeches, each of the party’s legislative candidates symbolically waved the party’s banner, passed to them by party Chairman Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩).
The "Lion of Justice" emblazoned on the banner also served as the theme animal of the rally.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Party volunteers said the lion (獅子) was chosen as the theme animal, because it sounds the same as the character shi (師) that describes a division within the military. It is in that context, the event was officially titled "The Troop of Justice Save Taiwan."
The character shi (師) also has the meaning of "teacher."
The party has received attention because of its close ties with a Buddhist sect led by Master Miao Tien (妙天), to which Hsu belongs. The sect is rumored to have provided funding and other assistance to the fledgling party, which was founded by Hsu in March after she left the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Party officials estimated that more than 20,000 people attended the rally, with the crowd spilling off of Ketagalan Boulevard onto a neighboring traffic circle.
Battalions of volunteers carrying the banners of the party’s individual legislative candidates milled throughout the site, with candidates delivering speeches in a special “soapbox” section.
The event also included a public writing wall and a children’s activity area, as well as booths for people to purchase party paraphernalia and to fill out forms to join the party.
At the back of the rally, people distributed fliers for discounted courses on subjects such as ukulele, congressional politics, political philosophy, organizational development and management, but there was no promotion of classes to “open up the brain’s potential” by Master Miao Tien’s sect.
A retired man surnamed Lin (林) said he joined the party after being approached by a recruiter in a public park, because he liked its philosophy of transcending party differences, adding that he attended the rally to learn more about the party’s specific policy platforms.
Volunteer Aga Yu (于治家) said she joined because of the influence of her teacher, Chang Cheng (張誠), who is one of the party’s legislative candidates.
While she attended a discounted chocolate-making activity organized by the party, she had not heard of there being any “brain potential” classes, she said.
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