Once a major subgroup within the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Representative to Japan Frank Hsieh’s (謝長廷) faction suffered a major loss at the party’s national congress yesterday with zero seats in the Central Standing Committee, while the former New Tide faction gained the most seats.
The party in 2006 resolved to dissolve its factions in a move to bolster party unity, although the groupings are still recognized by many people inside and outside of the DPP.
According to the DPP’s power structure, party delegates elect 30 Central Executive Committee members at the annual national congress, and the 30 Central Executive Committee members then choose 10 Central Standing Committee members among themselves.
In addition to the 10 elected seats, the party chair, the three top caucus officials, mayors of the special municipalities and one additional mayor also serve on the Central Standing Committee.
On the outgoing Central Standing Committee, Hsieh’s faction holds two seats — including himself and DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲). However, at yesterday’s election, Hsieh’s faction did not win any Central Standing Committee seats as its candidate, Kuan, received only one vote and another candidate, DPP Legislator Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟), received no votes.
While most other major factions retained a certain number of seats in the party’s core decision-making body, New Tide secured three seats and is now the faction with the most seats.
A DPP source said Kuan voted for herself, and Chao voted for DPP Kaohsiung City Councilor Lin Ying-jun (林瑩蓉).
“Some of the newly elected Central Standing Committee members were elected with only two votes, so if Hsieh’s faction had united and focused their votes on one person, they would still have had a chance,” said a DPP source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
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