Thu, Sep 22, 2016 page3

• DPP to mark 30th anniversary with photo exhibition

  DEMOCRATIC IDEALS: The exhibition in Taipei will display images of DPP members and supporters and their achievements in advancing democracy, the party said

  • By Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter
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  The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is to launch a photography exhibition in Taipei to celebrate the party’s 30th anniversary, with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) reaffirming the DPP’s democratic ideals.

  “A 30-year old party is like a 30-year old person, and it should be mature and stable to take on responsibility,” said Tsai, who is also the DPP’s chairperson, at the party’s weekly Central Standing Committee meeting.

  The party has to push the nation forward and live up to the public’s expectations, she added.

  

  President Tsai Ing-wen, center, and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials yesterday hold up signs introducing a series of activities to celebrate the party’s 30th anniversary at DPP headquarters in Taipei.

  Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times

  DPP members clashed with the establishment during the Martial Law era, and they engaged in elections and launched reforms in the democratic era, she said.

  “Something has not changed over the past 30 years. It is the party’s special feeling for the public,” she said.

  “The DPP has spent 30 years to prove it is a party worthy of trust. The 30-year-old DPP has returned to power and has to steadily develop the nation on the public’s mandate,” she said.

  The exhibition will be held at Zhongshan Hall in Taipei, which will display images of DPP members and supporters and their achievements in advancing democracy, the party said.

  Five short documentaries, collectively titled “Our Democratic Era,” will also be screened.

  The DPP will hold its Central Executive Committee meeting at the Grand Hotel in Taipei on Wednesday next week, where the party announced its formation in 1986.

  Asked whether the DPP would invite former party chairmen, including former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), to participate in celebration events, DPP spokesman David Huang (黃適卓) said the party had not discussed the matter.

  Meanwhile, the DPP expressed its support for the government’s planned reform of a privileged pension system, which counts the term of service of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members in the KMT toward their seniority in the government, while granting them an 18 percent preferential savings interest rate.

  A government report in 2007 showed that the nation had to pay an additional NT$300 million (US$9.55 million) to 581 such people in the pension system, DPP spokesman Yang Chia-liang (楊家俍) said.

  “The nation’s resources should not be spent on benefiting the members of a single party,” Yang said.

  Although the government abolished the regulations enabling the privileged pension system in December 1987, the government still has to pay preferential pension to KMT members who joined the party prior to that date, including former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and former Taichung mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), causing government expense to balloon, Yang said.

  The system has misappropriated government assets and undermined social justice, so it has to be abolished, he said.
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