By Chris Wang / Staff Reporter, in GREATER TAICHUNG
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) celebrated its 25th anniversary in Greater Taichung yesterday, with the party promising to live up to its name by upholding democratic values and winning in the presidential and legislative elections next year.
The DPP, founded on Sept. 28, 1986, during the Martial Law period, is “a political party to be proud of for being the torchbearer of Taiwan’s democracy for a quarter of a century,” DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said in a keynote speech.
The pride comes from the party’s footprints in every major development of Taiwanese democracy in the past 25 years, including the Wild Lily student movement in 1990, she said.
“We stayed with the people of Taiwan every step of the way,” she told hundreds of representatives from across the nation.
Almost all the current DPP heavyweights were founding members who risked arrest because martial law was not lifted until 1987 by then-president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國).
“The day the DPP was founded is the most unforgettable day in my life,” former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said.
A democratic system gives people freedom of choice and political parties opportunities to adjust and reflect, which was why the DPP has transitioned between being the ruling party and the opposition party in the past two decades, he said.
Su said the DPP has transformed itself in the past three years and it is time for the third regime change in the nation’s history.
The DPP’s founding in 1986 marked a new chapter in the nation’s political history, former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) said, adding that with the establishment of multiparty politics, Taiwan was able to walk out of the shadow of the White Terror period and transform itself into the vibrant democracy that people see and live in today.
It has been a “been here, done that” experience for the DPP in the past 25 years, said former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮), who served under former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) when the DPP was in power from 2000 to 2008.
“We failed before, and now we want to be successful again,” she said.
DPP vice presidential candidate Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), who is also the party’s secretary-general, said his political career started the same year the DPP was born, when he was 30.
It has been a special feeling to start his career along with the DPP, witness the party’s breakdown and see the party rise from the ashes to pose a challenge to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) again in three years, Su said.
“I would say that the best way to commemorate the party anniversary is to win both the presidential and legislative elections in January. And I’m sure the DPP is ready,” Su said.