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.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but