By Jason Pan / Staff reporterPro-Taiwan groups at an event in Taipei yesterday endorsed the government’s plans to restore compulsory military service to one year and to raise the basic pay for soldiers.
WRONG MESSAGE? A regulatory change putting Washington’s Taiwan oversight into its ‘China’ office waters down focus on Taipei and is inappropriate, critics saidBy Wang Chien-hao, Lee Hsin-fang and Jake Chung / Staff reporters, with staff writer
‘FREE SPEECH’: Taiwan Forever Society’s chairman said the suits are an ‘abuse of democracy to subvert democracy, and an abuse of freedom to suppress freedom’By Jason Pan / Staff reporter
An alliance of pro-Taiwan groups yesterday threw their support behind Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), calling on voters to end what it called the “24-year-old reign by pan-blue forces” in the capital.
Addressing the crowd, Chen said he was running for mayor to make Taipei and the nation better places to live.
“Taipei is the capital, and it is the locomotive driving the nation in plowing ahead,” said Chen, who spoke mainly in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), as he told the groups to call him “A-diong” (阿中).
Chen pointed to his administrative and organizational experience, having served
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday called for solidarity and mutual understanding at the opening of a memorial park for former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國).
Tsai’s remarks came a day after the Transitional Justice Commission said that the Ching-kuo Chi-hai Cultural Park (經國七海文化園區) in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area glorified authoritarianism and did not address Chiang’s role in the White Terror era.
The park, jointly built and operated by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and the Taipei City Government, includes the Chiang Ching-kuo Presidential Library, the first such library to be established in Taiwan.
“Chiang’s staunch defense of Taiwan is a stance