President Chen Shui-bian's (
After clinching a narrow victory in the presidential poll with 50.11 percent of the votes, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has started to sharpen its swords for the next legislative election with the goal of becoming the majority in the Legislature.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-People First Party (PFP) alliance is still mired in post-election protests, which is preventing the blue camp from preparing to face an imminent battle.
DPP Deputy Secretary General Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) said yesterday that the continuing protests by the KMT and PFP will deepen the conflicts between the two parties, which would benefit the DPP if it were to pursue an aligned strategy with the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), independent lawmakers and the "localization" force within the KMT.
This joint strategy will take the form of a "legislative majority alliance," proposed by Chen in his campaign platform.
However, to form an effective majority alliance with other strategic partners, the party has to tackle a balanced nomination of lawmakers, taking care not to crowd out the candidates of other parties.
"Currently the most important yet difficult task for the DPP is to efficiently coordinate with the TSU, independent lawmakers and `pro-localization' lawmakers within the KMT to achieve an `accurate nomination' in order to win more than half of the overall legislative seats," Lee said.
DPP legislative caucus whip Tsai Huang-lang (蔡煌瑯) said by forming a legislative majority alliance, the party aims to compose a stable alliance that could exceed half of the total number of legislative seats by a strong margin.
The Legislature currently has a total of 225 seats, with the DPP occupying 87 and the TSU 12. The remaining 126 seats are occupied by the KMT-PFP alliance and independent lawmakers.
DPP legislative caucus whip Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) said the ideal number of seats for such a stable alliance is 135, in which the DPP hopes to garner 100 seats and the TSU 15 to 20, with the remaining 15 seats taken up by the KMT's pro-localization lawmakers.
Lee said the expectation that the KMT's pro-localization lawmakers would join the alliance was based on predictions that the KMT would further split up after the legislative election.
"At this time, the TSU has been keenly beckoning to the KMT's pro-localization lawmakers to join the party under the leadership of former president Lee Teng-hui (
While the formation of such a legislative majority alliance needs further integration and cooperation within the pan-green camp, there is fierce competition among DPP lawmakers from various factions competing for nominations as legislative candidates.
The TSU has decided to nominate only one or two candidates in each electoral district in a bid not to be crowded out by contestants from other parties.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS