Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said in an interview yesterday that while leaders should be responsible for their party’s victories and defeats, the DPP has yet to offer a better candidate than President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for next year’s presidential election.
The DPP’s landslide loss in the local elections on Nov. 24 last year should be attributed to differences in the priorities of the public and the government, said Luo, who took office on Wednesday.
“The government is living in a different world than the public,” he said.
Photo: CNA
Next year’s presidential election would not be about pan-blue versus pan-green ideology, but about dictatorship versus democracy, Luo said.
Luo said he would help the party select a candidate that would win the election and “achieve specific goals” for Taiwan.
The DPP’s values and strong links to the public make it the best choice to protect Taiwanese and “the most stable organization that the public can rely on,” he said.
While the incumbent president should be looked at as a candidate, others should also be considered, Luo said.
The DPP has the fairest candidate selection mechanism and would be able to choose the candidate with the most support, he said, adding: “To date, I have not seen any candidates that would be a better choice than Tsai.”
Taiwan requires a “real” representative, one who can tell the international community what the nation wants, Luo said.
With a cool head and clarity of thought, and by not compromising on her stance regarding the nation’s future, Tsai has garnered strong international support over the past two years and achieved open dialogue with the international community, he said.
Tsai has defended Taiwan’s values and international status better than any previous president, Luo said.
However, Tsai must address her weakness in governance, adjust her leadership style and change how decisions are made, Luo said, adding that the appointment of Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) as premier would help address Tsai’s administrative weaknesses.
Earlier this month, four senior Taiwanese independence advocates published a letter urging Tsai not to seek re-election next year, saying that Taiwanese had cast a “vote of no-confidence” against her in the local elections, in which the DPP lost control of seven cities and counties.
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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