The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday called on President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to grant former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) medical parole after a magazine reported on the deterioration of Chen’s health.
The DPP Central Standing Committee yesterday reached a resolution to demand that Ma grant medical parole for Chen, who is serving an 18-and-a-half-year sentence for corruption, but has been hospitalized for treatment of various complications.
“We urge President Ma to let former president Chen go home for the Lunar New Year holidays. It’s best for him to be at home with his family during the New Year holidays,” DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told a press conference.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Support for granting medical parole has become stronger after 17 city and county councils passed resolutions in support of the move, Su said.
The Chinese-language Next Magazine yesterday published an article that cited a 28-second video clip recorded during a visit to see Chen at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, where the former president is undergoing treatment. The report said Chen is suffering deteriorating Parkinson’s disease.
Former DPP lawmaker Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) admitted on a TV political talk show yesterday afternoon that he recorded the video when he visited Chen, but said that he neither distributed the video clip nor posted it on the Internet.
Led by DPP Legislator Mark Chen (陳唐山), eight DPP and Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislators called a joint press conference yesterday afternoon at the legislature in Taipei, urging the Ministry of Justice to reconsider Chen’s application for medical parole.
If former Executive Yuan secretary-general Lin Yi-shih (林益世), who has been bailed after being indicted on corruption charges, has been able to return to his Kaohsiung home for the Lunar New Year, the former president should receive the same treatment, Mark Chen said.
In Kaohsiung, Chen Chih-chung (陳致中), the former president’s son, said he did not mind Twu recording his father without prior consultation with the family. He said he hoped that medical parole could be granted to his father, who is battling mental illness.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
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