Take me to your leader, Jerry.
As if politics in Taiwan weren't bizarre enough, Jerry Fan (
The campaign to oust President Chen Shui-bian (
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Nazca Lines
But yesterday's announcement set a milestone for the campaign: Fan said the campaign should call on the Nazca Lines in Peru to help accomplish its goals.
Fan told reporters in a press conference yesterday that, in an effort to unite the "heavens and the earth for strength," he wanted protestors to make a pattern visible from space, and that the concept was inspired by Peru's Nazca Lines.
The Nazca Lines are geoglyphs resembling animals that cannot be recognized, except from high above the Earth. They were created more than a millennium ago, and most archeologists agree that the technique used to construct them is relatively simple, albeit time-consuming.
However, many fringe theorists and New Age thinkers believe the lines must not be the work of human creators alone, because humans could not have seen their work from Earth using human technology at the time.
This conundrum has led such theorists to assert that the creators received help from extraterrestrials in making the lines, or that extraterrestrials themselves made them.
Fan said that, in the spirit of the Nazca Lines, the anti-Chen campaign would position demonstrators in the shape of a giant drawing compass.
"This is a drawing compass," Fan told reporters as he displayed a bird's-eye diagram of his latest campaign brainchild.
He added that the message implicit in the pattern was that Chen must hold himself to a strict moral standard.
This is based on a play-on-words, as the Chinese character for "compass" (yuangui,
"This [will be] a ceremony to call on the heavens and earth for strength," Fan told reporters.
He added that the compass pattern also resembled an Aboriginal warrior grasping a blade and poised to "slash corruption."
Fan also denied reports of a power struggle in the anti-Chen campaign due to controversy over his creative direction.
The campaign's original representative, Ho Do-fen (
In addition to his Nazca Line-inspired formation concept, Fan proposed that protesters wear red, and that classical music be played at the sit-in.
"If you can, wear red clothes [to the sit-in]," Fan said yesterday in an exclusive with CTiTV, a local TV network.
"It's not hard to wear red. It's not difficult," he added.
Flaming curtains
According to a CNA report on Sunday, Fan also announced that the sit-in area on Ketagalan Boulevard will be flanked by curtains painted with flames. Fan said that the flames and red motif were meant to reflect the anger generated by Chen's corrupt government, the report said.
Ho has strenuously objected to Fan's themes of anger and violence, according to local media. She has not attended campaign policy meetings recently, reports said, and her disagreement with Fan has fueled speculation of a leadership crisis in Shih's camp.
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