Former Academia Sinica president Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲) and other former officials yesterday expressed their support for New Power Party (NPP) Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), urging people in his constituency to vote against the lawmaker’s recall tomorrow.
Although his views on many issues might not reflect traditional beliefs, Huang is a legislator with ideals and one who protects the interests of the public, Lee said at a news conference held by the NPP.
Some people blame Huang for supporting same-sex marriage, but the overwhelming majority of people would remain attracted to the opposite sex and this would not be affected by the minority who are not, Lee said.
Photo: Lin Hsin-han, Taipei Times
There are exceptions to the majority’s natural behavior and people should be tolerant of minorities, Lee added.
The Legislative Yuan is a place where controversies in society are fought out, former national policy adviser Rex How (郝明義) said.
Legislators hold a very low position in people’s hearts and many accuse them of only doing their parties’ bidding after they are elected, forgetting the promises they made during their campaigns, How said.
Huang actively pushed for the threshold for recall petitions to be lowered to improve the Legislative Yuan, How said, referring to an amendment to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) that was passed last month.
However, after the threshold was lowered, Huang himself became a target for recall, How said.
Former grand justice Hsu Yu-hsiu (許玉秀) said she regretted that people had petitioned to demand a recall election for Huang, when he actively fought for the electorate’s right to do so.
Huang is a hardworking legislator, Hsu said.
How and Hsu urged people to stand up and exercise their right cast a vote against Huang’s recall.
When asked during a radio interview yesterday whether he was confident that he would win the recall election, Huang said that he would not utter the words “I will win.”
Huang said he was 99 percent confident that the recall motion would not pass.
Media have reported that some groups have used ”recall Huang Kuo-chang, punish [President] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)” as a slogan in the campaign to recall Huang.
Huang said he did not believe that he was being “punished” for Tsai’s policies.
The Tsai administration is much better than former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) government and it is inappropriate to use such heavy words, Huang 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