Saying he was deeply saddened over the passing of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday recalled Lee as a man of perseverance and strong willpower.
Wang, the nation’s longest-serving legislative speaker, had held the position for 17 years from 1999 to 2016.
Like Lee, Wang served as a Taiwan-born official to the KMT, which in the decades after 1949 saw its leadership dominated by Mainlanders who fled to Taiwan from China after their defeat in the Chinese Civil War.
In response to media queries to verify claims that he and Lee had once stood together in the rain for 10 minutes while attempting to visit then-National Assembly members who refused to meet them, Wang said it was true, and that Lee’s insistence at the time demonstrated his spirit of perseverance and willpower.
Lee cared very much about the country, Wang said, adding that the last time he saw the former president was short after Lee was in February admitted to Taipei Veterans General Hospital.
While Lee had initially expressed that he was looking forward to Wang’s visit, he was asleep when Wang arrived, and the two did not have the chance to talk, Wang said.
He recalled fondly the contributions Lee made to the development of democracy in Taiwan, which put the nation on firm ground, Wang said.
Lee had been responsible for six constitutional amendments that removed temporary clauses from the constitution and made the National Assembly obsolete, as well as making the premier an appointed position, he said.
In effect, this served as a complete reform of the legislature, and in 1992 a new democratic legislature emerged, he said.
Taiwan under Lee also joined APEC as a sovereign state, and Lee introduced allowances for elderly farmers, he said.
“Lee was both a politician and a strategist, and in terms of his thought processes, he stood out from the rest,” Wang said at his home in Kaohsiung’s Lujhu District (路竹).
Wang recalled working with Lee at the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (now the Council of Agriculture) and watching Lee continuously rise in the ranks of government until he became president.
In 1992, Lee recommended Wang for the position of KMT caucus secretary-general, which he then held concurrently with the post of vice chairman of the KMT Central Policy Committee. During his time in these posts, he found it remarkable that Lee never interfered with the legislature, he said.
Lee had also wanted him to run for president, Wang said, but added that he never committed to the idea out of concerns over the KMT’s future.
Wang said he would be visiting Taipei tomorrow to pay his respects to Lee.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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