About 500 protesters demonstrated on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei yesterday, vowing to recall President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and lawmakers in the pan-green camp.
The protesters rallied around several themes, accusing Tsai of rigging the Jan. 11 presidential election, that she “bought” her doctorate at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and that Tsai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers who pander to her should be recalled.
Democracy Watch Alliance convener Huang Cheng-chung (黃正忠) said that if the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) does not take action on the death of KMT Kaohsiung City Council Speaker Hsu Kun-yuan (許崑源), he would quit the party.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Hsu, who strongly supported Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), was found dead after falling from his 17th-floor apartment in Kaohsiung on the night of June 6, several hours after the city’s voters cast their ballots in favor of recalling Han.
Huang said that Hsu died a wrongful death, and that yesterday’s rally sought in part to redress the injustice perpetrated against him.
If the KMT “does not have the guts,” he would leave the party and run in the Kaohsiung mayoral by-election to avenge Hsu, said Huang, who is from Kaohsiung.
China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP) chairman Chang An-le (張安樂), who also joined the demonstration, said that Hsu was one of the two politicians in the pan-blue camp that he respected the most — the other one being Jenn Lann Temple (鎮瀾宮) chairman Yen Ching-piao (顏清標).
Han singlehandedly saved the KMT in the 2018 nine-in-one local elections with his rising popularity, but KMT heavyweights, including former KMT chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), brought him down for their own gain, he said, adding that Han, who ran as the KMT’s presidential candidate in January, could have brought eight years of peace to the Taiwan Strait had he been elected.
“KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) asked us not to initiate revenge recalls, but that is exactly what we are going to do,” retired Taipei City University of Science and Technology lecturer Chou Ming-tai (周明台) said.
New Power Party Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷) and Taiwan Statebuilding Party Legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟) are DPP members in all but name, Chou added.
They, along with DPP Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) and DPP Taoyuan City Councilor Wang Hao-yu (王浩宇), are all “dregs” that must be tossed out, Chou said, adding that the four politicians — all vocal critics of Han — should be the targets of a revenge recall campaign.
The DPP has announced a Kaohsiung mayoral by-election for Aug. 15, just two months after Han was recalled, even though the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) states that a by-election should be held within three months of a recall vote, Chou said.
“Give the DPP an inch and it will take a mile,” he said. “The only way to topple the DPP is through a full-on clash.”
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching