The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) will have "writing a new constitution for a new Taiwan and a rectified name for the new country" as its campaign theme in the year-end legislative elections, a TSU official said yesterday.
TSU Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) made the announcement after the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said its campaign theme would be to end the influence of opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) in politics.
Lin said that although the TSU is an ally of the DPP, it will have its own campaign theme to solicit as much support as possible for the pan-green camp.
He said that the DPP was taking the right approach with its theme, while the TSU's theme of changing the national name and writing a new Constitution was aimed at raising Taiwanese consciousness and solidifying a sense of national identity.
TSU Legislator Cheng Cheng-lung (
Lin said that this is a priority, citing the example of the Kaohsiung City Council by-election as an example, saying that if the candidates of two allied parties attack each other, they can easily be defeated.
The TSU has nominated 27 out of a scheduled 29 candidates for the year-end legislative elections, Lin said.
The by-election in Kaohsiung, the last election battle prior to the legislative elections and widely seen as a litmus test of the strengths of the various political parties, saw the TSU gain three seats out of the 18 seats contested, while all four candidates of the PFP failed.
Despite the DPP being the largest party in the 225-seat legislature, the pan-greens currently lag slightly behind the pan-blue alliance.
Meanwhile, the TSU's central executive committee decided yesterday that Chairman Huang Chu-wen (
As there was only one candidate for the TSU chairmanship, the party decided not to hold a vote. Huang only needed to obtain support from more than half of the committee members in line with the party's regulations. Huang had unanimous support.
Huang has served as a legislator and as an interior minister.
With high confidence for good results in the year-end legislative elections, Huang predicted earlier this year that the pan-green camp would gain more than 55 percent of the legislature's 225 seats. If this were to happen, it could eliminate the opposition's blockade of bills proposed by the DPP administration.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS