Two former DPP heavyweights and several liberal academics yesterday announced the establishment the "Tang wai round-table forum" (
At a meeting that was more like a reunion of aging politicians, participants urged people to retain the spirit of the tang wai, or outside the party, movement and blasted the DPP for governing the country based on ideology.
Former DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (
"Taiwan's political scene is dominated by party politics. It is either pan-blue or pan-green. Regardless, we wish Taiwanese can keep the tang wai spirit," Hsu said.
The idea for the forum was floated about one month ago by Hsu and former DPP legislator Ju Gau-jeng (朱高正). Members include a dozen of longtime liberal academics and former DPP members.
Hsu is also trying to persuade former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh (
Ju said that a survey showed 62 percent of people were disappointed with all political parties and he hoped the forum could serve as a stage on which intellectuals could speak their minds.
Both Hsu and Ju were once charismatic opposition leaders and contributed to democratization. But in the process of the nation's political transformation, both were marginalized. Both were revolutionaries, but could not find themselves a place in modern party politics.
With the two camps pitted against each other, Ju and Hsu are apparently trying to position themselves on a new political stage.
A staunch democracy campaigner who fought the KMT during the tang wai era in the 1970s and 1980s, Hsu was DPP chairman for six years until 1999 when he left the party due to his views on China policy.
Ju, dubbed as a "battleship of democracy," ridiculed the irrationality of the "permanent parliament," under which the KMT claimed its members could be re-elected once they recovered China. In late 1980s, he became the first legislator in Taiwan known to have resorted to physical violence to disrupt legislative proceedings and helped terminate the tenure of decades-old assemblymen and legislators.
His arrogance and ill-temper made him a controversial politician, eventually leading to his split with the party.
After they left the DPP, both men spent a lot of time advocating a more accommodating policy toward China and bitterly criticized the DPP's cross-strait policy.
In 2000, Hsu paired with former New Party legislator Josephine Chu (朱惠良) in the presidential election, but the pair lost miserably. Since then, he has faded from the political scene.
After Ju left the DPP, he joined the New Party, and later served as a founding chairman of the Social Democratic Party. The party disappeared. He ran for a legislative seat several times, but failed each time.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS