Taiwan’s DPP chairman quits after defeat

WORLD NEWS
ASSOCIATED PRESS SERVICE


TAIPEI- Taiwan’s losing presidential candidate Frank Hsieh quite as chairman of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party on Wednesday, saying the party needed to reform to attract younger voters.
Hsieh won just over 40 percent of the presidential vote on Saturday, far behind Ma Ying-jeou of the main opposition Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, which once ruled all of China.
“I’ve said that this was not a defeat for democracy, but a personal setback. I am willing to accept that responsibility,” Hsieh told a meeting of senior party officials.
The former human rights lawyer said that the party, founded when Taiwan was still under martial law in 1986, had to attract more young people.
The party favours formal independence for Taiwan, which China has claimed as its own since defeated Nationalist forces fled there at the end of a civil war in 1949.
Under President Chen Shui-bian, the DPP has pushed the island’s separate identity from China, for example by promoting Taiwan’s once marginalised non-Mandarin dialects and languages, such as Taiwanese, Hakka and aboriginal tongues.
“The DPP has for so many years promoted native consciousness, which has already won consensus in society. In the future the party will no longer monopolise Taiwan,” Hsieh said, of a policy that has infuriated China.
The DPP should hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss its future, he added. “We must let the sound of reform ring out,” Hsieh said.
The party did not immediately announce a successor, although many people have pointed to Hsieh’s running mate, Su Tseng-chang.