Two former DPP heavyweights and several liberal academics yesterday announced the establishment the "Tang wai round-table forum" (
At a meeting that was more like a reunion of aging politicians, participants urged people to retain the spirit of the tang wai, or outside the party, movement and blasted the DPP for governing the country based on ideology.
Former DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (
"Taiwan's political scene is dominated by party politics. It is either pan-blue or pan-green. Regardless, we wish Taiwanese can keep the tang wai spirit," Hsu said.
The idea for the forum was floated about one month ago by Hsu and former DPP legislator Ju Gau-jeng (朱高正). Members include a dozen of longtime liberal academics and former DPP members.
Hsu is also trying to persuade former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh (
Ju said that a survey showed 62 percent of people were disappointed with all political parties and he hoped the forum could serve as a stage on which intellectuals could speak their minds.
Both Hsu and Ju were once charismatic opposition leaders and contributed to democratization. But in the process of the nation's political transformation, both were marginalized. Both were revolutionaries, but could not find themselves a place in modern party politics.
With the two camps pitted against each other, Ju and Hsu are apparently trying to position themselves on a new political stage.
A staunch democracy campaigner who fought the KMT during the tang wai era in the 1970s and 1980s, Hsu was DPP chairman for six years until 1999 when he left the party due to his views on China policy.
Ju, dubbed as a "battleship of democracy," ridiculed the irrationality of the "permanent parliament," under which the KMT claimed its members could be re-elected once they recovered China. In late 1980s, he became the first legislator in Taiwan known to have resorted to physical violence to disrupt legislative proceedings and helped terminate the tenure of decades-old assemblymen and legislators.
His arrogance and ill-temper made him a controversial politician, eventually leading to his split with the party.
After they left the DPP, both men spent a lot of time advocating a more accommodating policy toward China and bitterly criticized the DPP's cross-strait policy.
In 2000, Hsu paired with former New Party legislator Josephine Chu (朱惠良) in the presidential election, but the pair lost miserably. Since then, he has faded from the political scene.
After Ju left the DPP, he joined the New Party, and later served as a founding chairman of the Social Democratic Party. The party disappeared. He ran for a legislative seat several times, but failed each time.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS