Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) formally announced his candidacy yesterday as registration opened for the party chairmanship election.
Registration will close on Friday and the election is scheduled for May 18.
Chai yesterday said that he wanted to stand in the contest because he felt it was his unshirkable duty to do something for the party, which he said has been facing an unparalleled crisis since it lost the legislative election in January and the presidential election last month.
PHOTO: LU CHUN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
“I promise, if given a chance, to do my very best to salvage the party and the lost trust of the people of Taiwan,” he said.
If elected, Chai said, he would make efforts to keep the 5.4 million people who voted for the DPP in the presidential election and hoped to obtain 1 million more to resume power.
Referring to the talk about generational change, the 73-year-old Chai said that he agreed with the notion of transferring power to the younger generation and that, if elected, he would propose to amend the party charter to establish one or two vice chairpersons.
“The party is in a dire situation, far worse than it was some 20 years ago during the dangwai [outside the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)] period,” Chai said. “I cannot solve all the party’s problems alone, so I am thinking of jointly leading the party with the vice chairpersons, who must not only have experience, but also have Taiwan-centered consciousness.”
Chai also addressed the much-criticized problem of “shell party members” or nominal party members who are members recruited by a faction boss or politician with a view to increasing their influence in the party.
Nominal members have little or no interest in the party themselves, but present a vote bank on which the politically ambitious can draw.
Chai said that he would like to see these members transform themselves from mere voting machines to individuals devoting themselves to community or charity work. To that end, he would propose to train “democracy volunteers” at the party’s Democracy Academy.
Chai also vowed to put the party’s platform into practice, in particular building a new republic.
Chai said vice president-elect Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) had pushed Taiwan into peril by attending the Boao Forum for Asia in China, as had president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) by recognizing the so-called “1992 consensus,” in which the KMT said that Taipei and Beijing agreed that there is “one China” and each side has its own interpretation of its meaning.
Any negotiation with China would be meaningless if the negotiation was conducted under the framework of “one China,” Chai said, adding that the Ma administration should request that Beijing respect the existence of the Republic of China rather than ask it to relinquish its sovereignty.
If elected, Chai said, he would produce effective measures to counter Ma’s policies, but he did not elaborate what the measures would be.
While Chai said he would stand in the contest until the very end, he left room for negotiation. DPP Chairman Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) has said that he is not against using negotiations to find a new party leader and he would negotiate with interested parties.
The party would only have an election if the negotiations failed, he said.
Meanwhile, the DPP said yesterday that Yao Jen-to (姚人多), an assistant professor of sociology at National Tsinghua University, would serve as a special assistant to Hsieh, while Taipei City Councilwoman Yen Sheng-kuan (顏聖冠) would head the DPP’s Culture and Information Department.
The party said the two would offer their services free of charge.
Alain Robert, known as the "French Spider-Man," praised Alex Honnold as exceptionally well-prepared after the US climber completed a free solo ascent of Taipei 101 yesterday. Robert said Honnold's ascent of the 508m-tall skyscraper in just more than one-and-a-half hours without using safety ropes or equipment was a remarkable achievement. "This is my life," he said in an interview conducted in French, adding that he liked the feeling of being "on the edge of danger." The 63-year-old Frenchman climbed Taipei 101 using ropes in December 2004, taking about four hours to reach the top. On a one-to-10 scale of difficulty, Robert said Taipei 101
A preclearance service to facilitate entry for people traveling to select airports in Japan would be available from Thursday next week to Feb. 25 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) said on Tuesday. The service was first made available to Taiwanese travelers throughout the winter vacation of 2024 and during the Lunar New Year holiday. In addition to flights to the Japanese cities of Hakodate, Asahikawa, Akita, Sendai, Niigata, Okayama, Takamatsu, Kumamoto and Kagoshima, the service would be available to travelers to Kobe and Oita. The service can be accessed by passengers of 15 flight routes operated by
Taiwanese and US defense groups are collaborating to introduce deployable, semi-autonomous manufacturing systems for drones and components in a boost to the nation’s supply chain resilience. Taiwan’s G-Tech Optroelectronics Corp subsidiary GTOC and the US’ Aerkomm Inc on Friday announced an agreement with fellow US-based Firestorm Lab to adopt the latter’s xCell, a technology featuring 3D printers fitted in 6.1m container units. The systems enable aerial platforms and parts to be produced in high volumes from dispersed nodes capable of rapid redeployment, to minimize the risk of enemy strikes and to meet field requirements, they said. Firestorm chief technology officer Ian Muceus said
MORE FALL: An investigation into one of Xi’s key cronies, part of a broader ‘anti-corruption’ drive, indicates that he might have a deep distrust in the military, an expert said China’s latest military purge underscores systemic risks in its shift from collective leadership to sole rule under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), and could disrupt its chain of command and military capabilities, a national security official said yesterday. If decisionmaking within the Chinese Communist Party has become “irrational” under one-man rule, the Taiwan Strait and the regional situation must be approached with extreme caution, given unforeseen risks, they added. The anonymous official made the remarks as China’s Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠) and Joint Staff Department Chief of Staff Liu Zhenli (劉振立) were reportedly being investigated for suspected “serious
RSS