Taiwanese
students win top awards at physics Olympiad
STAFF WRITER, WITH CNA
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2008, Page 2
Taiwanese students won two gold, three silver and two bronze medals as well as
an honorable mention in the just-concluded 2008 Asian Physics Olympiad, an
official of the Ministry of Education said yesterday.
A total of 136 students from 18 countries participated in the event held between
April 20 and yesterday in Ulan Bator, Mongolia.
Taiwan sent eight senior high school students to the competition.
The two gold medalists were Ho Ying-you (何應佑), a student at the National
Experimental High School at the Science-based Industrial Park in Hsinchu, and
Chu Po-yu (朱柏聿) from Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School.
Ho, who excels in chemistry, physics and computer program design, also won a
gold medal in the International Chemistry Olympiad last year.
He said he hoped to pursue advanced studies at prominent international
universities abroad after obtaining a bachelor’s degree at home.
He promised to dedicate himself to the study of basic science and to contribute
to the nation’s scientific development.
Chu, who earned the bronze medal in last year’s Asian Physics Olympiad, now
studies in Jianguo High School’s elite class.
Chu is also a cofounder of the school’s institute of robot study.
A ministry official said that Taiwan had won 22 gold, 19 silver and 17 bronze
medals — as well as six honorary mentions — since the annual competition was
first held in Indonesia in 2000.
The eight Taiwanese in this year’s competition will head to Beijing and Xian,
China, for educational exchanges after leaving Mongolia tomorrow.
They are scheduled to return home on Saturday.
DPP must
mend to attract voters
By Liang Wen-Chieh
梁文傑
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2008, Page 8
Former secretary-general of the Presidential Office Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟) has
joined the supporters of former senior presidential adviser Koo Kwang-ming’s
(辜寬敏) bid for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairmanship. Chen echoed
Koo’s suggestion that the party’s 5.44 million supporters be consolidated, and
called on the DPP not to follow the middle road because the party should meet
the expectations of the 5.44 million people who voted for it. DPP Legislator
Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮), another candidate for the top DPP job, has also placed
holding on to these key voters at the heart of his bid for the chairmanship.
No DPP members would deny the importance of consolidating the party’s existing
supporters. But the question is why these 5.44 million people voted for the DPP.
What can the party do to hang onto these supporters?
Over the past 20 years, there have been great changes in the structure of DPP
support. Pro-Taiwanese intellectuals, young people and the urban middle class
were the backbone of early DPP support. Rural voters in central and southern
Taiwan were not attracted to the party until the late 1990s or even later, after
it took power.
Latecomers did not give the party their support because of its abstract
idealistic promotion of Taiwanese independence but because its policies placed
more importance on the balance between north and south and on the interests of
farmers and workers, such as pensions for farmers. The success of local DPP
governments also won the party support and votes.
This kind of support, however, is not very stable because it is attached to the
party’s political promises and government resources. As long as president-elect
Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) can maintain a strategy balancing the north and south, it
won’t be too difficult for him to completely turn the tables on the DPP over the
next few years. We may know the outcome after the county commissioner and city
mayor elections at the end of next year — the most optimistic forecast is that
the DPP will lose just two seats, while the worst case-scenario is that it will
disappear altogether.
However, the long-term supporters have remained loyal as they have a deeper
understanding of and have thought more about the characteristics of a Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT) government and Taiwan’s historical development. Their
feeling is that however unsatisfactory the DPP’s performance may have been, it
is still superior to that of the KMT.
These people are idealistic supporters who demand that the politicians they
support meet certain standards. They do not think that Minister of Education Tu
Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) — or the ministry’s former secretary-general Chuang Kuo-rong
(莊國榮) — represent localization, or that integrity issues should be covered up by
the sovereignty issue. They have tried to influence their friends to support the
DPP, but when they are ridiculed for the party’s actions, they won’t launch a
strong defense but just reply with silence.
These supporters have been voting with tears in their eyes in recent years. They
are like victims of domestic violence — although mentally and physically
traumatized, they are still unwilling to abandon their abuser. But if the
perpetrator declares that they remain because they like to be mistreated and
thus should continue to be mistreated, they must come out and protest.
Even if the DPP could maintain the support of these 5.44 million voters, it
cannot become a meaningful party. The reason is simple: Even if these supporters
vote with tears in their eyes, it is not very likely that others will start to
vote for the DPP. Swing voters will ask why they should vote for the DPP if its
core followers barely support it.
Thus if the DPP cannot satisfy its existing supporters, it won’t be able to
garner the extra 1 million voters needed to win an election. In the past
multi-member district system, the party could maintain 40 percent of the
legislative seats, but under the current single-member district system, it will
not obtain more than 25 percent of the seats. Would the public then care who the
chairman of the party is?
Political parties should make meeting the expectations of existing supporters a
priority. This is the rule of thumb in politics.
The DPP’s problem is not that it focuses too much on current supporters, but
that it doesn’t satisfy them at all. Instead, it drains them of all their
sympathy to hijack their vote, thus keeping other voters out.
If we think that we can go on doing this, we are taking the Taiwanese people in
general, and the party’s 5.44 million supporters in particular, for fools.
Liang Wen-chieh is former deputy
director of the DPP’s Policy Research and Coordinating Committee.