Taiwanese have the right to build a democratic, sovereign nation based on the protection of human rights and freedom, President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said in his keynote address at the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) National Congress in Taipei.
Lai, who is also the DPP’s chairman, presented three key tasks for party members to focus on: bolstering national identity based on Taiwan sovereignty, deepening democratic values based on the constitutional framework and safeguarding human rights and freedom.
“Voters have handed the heavy responsibility of governing this country to the DPP, because they wish for the DPP to continue leading Taiwan into the future,” Lai said.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
“Taking control of government should not be for personal benefit, but to realize our shared ideals and values, to achieve them for our nation and its citizens,” he said.
“Taiwan is the mother for all of us, and we have the right to build our democratic ... nation,” Lai said.
Lai stressed the need to make a clean break from the past when Taiwan was under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
“Taiwan’s democracy activists in the early years shed blood, with some sacrificing their lives to expose the lies — the KMT’s mistaken idea of ‘using Taiwan as a base to retake China,’” he said.
Now government policies that put Taiwan first must be implemented, Lai said.
“The DPP has the responsibility to unite the people, to oppose annexation by China and to safeguard national sovereignty,” he said.
The DPP would put all of its effort into ensuring Taiwanese to know their nation’s history and culture, “for the 23 million people of Taiwan to forge a collective national identity, [with] a common destiny in this homeland,” Lai said.
“We must ensure that national identity does not become the basis for outside forces to create internal strife and conflict,” he added.
Lai also reminded party members how the DPP was established during the 1980s.
“The DPP was born ... during the authoritarian one-party state era. The party founders insisted on clean politics and railed against corruption, holding onto the spirit of loving this homeland of ours, and standing together with the common people,” Lai said.
“In doing so, we ... challenged martial law, breaking through the KMT government’s ban against establishing new political parties and the ban against newspapers and media,” he said, referring to publications that were not under state control.
Together with democracy advocates, the DPP fought for 100 percent freedom of expression, and pushed for parliamentary reforms, to phase out legislators elected to represent provinces of China and have more representatives of cities and counties of Taiwan, Lai said, adding that the party also demanded that people should vote directly for the president.
At the congress, party members would vote to elect new executives, and place new members on party committees, Lai said.
“This means the DPP is officially entering into a new era, during a time when Taiwan is facing greater challenges from within and from external forces,” he said.
“We expect the party’s new working teams to take up this greater burden... We must unite to exert power and strength at critical times to lead Taiwan forward on the path of democracy,” he said.
Former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) did not attend the congress yesterday as she had a personal commitment.
Almost all of the party’s major members were present, including former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS