Supporters led by Free Taiwan Party Chairman Tsay Ting-kuei (蔡丁貴) who are camped outside the legislature in Taipei yesterday said they intend to stay put to keep the need for a new constitution in the public eye, even as the party’s opaque finances drew criticism from former members.
“The responsibility of us small parties is to keep pushing and raising questions about things that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) doesn’t want to talk about because it’s concerned with maintaining its majority,” Tsay said. “[The protest] is not directed at the DPP because they know what we’re up to — its directed at the public as a whole.”
Members of the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan, which Tsay also heads and whose elderly members serve as the backbone of his party, began their sit-in outside the legislature in October 2008 after taking part in a DPP-organized protest against then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
They originally called for amendments to the Referendum Act (公民投票法) to lower the threshold for passage, as well as the abolition of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法).
Revisions to both laws are currently being considered by the legislature, in which the DPP holds a majority of seats following January’s legislative elections.
The activists later established the Free Taiwan Party to participate in elections, but failed to win a seat or a political subsidy after garnering fewer than 1 percent of at-large legislative votes.
While there are no plans to make changes to the sit-in, which consists of continuous occupation by individual members punctuated by weekly forums, the group is now willing to accept being located permanently on Jinan Road instead of rotating between Jinan Road and Zhongshan N Road it did as previously, Tsay said, adding that the group had already received good exposure during the 2014 Sunflower movement and the space on Jinan Road is wider, cleaner and quieter than Zhongshan N Road, a major artery.
Both roads border the Jinan Road Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, which is located on a corner surrounded by Legislative Yuan buildings.
The party has downsized due to its inability to afford the rent on its offices, Tsay said, adding that it spends about NT$200,000 each month on expenses, of which NT$100,000 is provided by online contributions to the party.
“[Student activists] quit after they found out we didn’t have as much money as they thought,” Tsay said when asked about the election-season spat which saw a number of young activists drop their support for the party.
However, a former supporter said the split was caused by opaque finances.
“The real problem was the financial situation was murky,” said one former volunteer, who requested anonymity, adding that money raised at fundraisers held jointly with the Alliance of Referendum for Taiwan was held by the nongovernmental organization to avoid the reporting requirements for political donations.
“[Elderly activists] believe that you shouldn’t let the exiled government [of the Republic of China] know exactly how much money you have, so finances were always extremely opaque and without transparency there was no foundation of trust,” the former volunteer said, adding that there were also disagreements over the necessity of amending the Constitution and hiring full-time grass-roots campaigners.
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:
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