Premier Su Tseng-chang (
"Dual-party politics is good for this country. But, both the pan-blue camp and the pan-green camp will face enormous internal pressure in carrying out any form of integration," Government Information Office Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (
Cheng was asked to comment on behalf of the premier yesterday morning regarding Yu's proposal on Sunday on forging an alliance with the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU). He said that unless there was a way of modifying the result of the Constitutional amendment pertaining to the legislature, dual-party politics would be the direction of the future. The premier would therefore support Yu's proposal.
Cheng was referring to the Constitutional amendment which replaced the old "multi-member district, single-vote system" with the "single-member district, two-vote system" (
The amendment regulates that starting with the next legislative election, which will be held next year, the total number of legislative seats will be reduced from 223 to 113.
To increase its chances of winning in future elections, Yu then proposed the idea of forging an alliance with the TSU.
"The `single-member district, two-vote system' will naturally give rise to dual-party politics. As for how [we can] forge such an alliance, it will require a high degree of political acuity," Cheng said. "Chairman Yu has proposed an outline, and his outline will be endorsed by the premier."
Despite the DPP's enthusiasm, the lukewarm response from the TSU signals a difficult road ahead for the proposed alliance. TSU Secretary-General Lo Chih-ming (
"The DPP has a sufficient mechanism for communication between different political parties, and we will continue to keep it that way," Cheng said.
Meanwhile, DPP Legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) yesterday said he agreed that it was necessary to facilitate cooperation between the DPP and the TSU, but he did not think it was time to talk about a merger.
"I think cooperation in the legislative elections is urgently needed in the pan-green camp; [pan-green] supporters also expect the two parties to cooperate," Lin said.
However, Lin said that forming an alliance or merging was a huge political task that would not be easy to achieve.
"I think the DPP and the TSU can start their cooperation with the Taipei and Kaohsiung elections and then extend the model to the legislative elections next year," Lin said.
Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (
"I believe as long as the DPP performs better and wins back the people's confidence, there will be room for talks about a merger," Cheng said.
Meanwhile, TSU Chairman Shu Chin-chiang (
"Former president Lee Teng-hui (
Shu said that Lee was worried about the DPP's performance, its leaders' integrity and the government's effectiveness.
While these are key problems, Shu said: "We hope that people can stop speculating about the relationship between Lee and Chen. Lee does not have personal likes or dislikes about the president."
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS