Yesterday was Taiwan's National Day - similar to the Canadian Canada Day. A and I had plans of going to the annual parade and presidential (and other) speech, but decided that this wasn't the year to do it. This year's event was unlike any other year, and prior to this day, apparently the President, Chen Shui-Bian himself was asking the legistative assembly whether he may be excused from the event.

For those keeping up with Taiwanese current events, in recent months, the First Family has been under some scrunity of illegal behaviour (wife and son-in-law in particular). Naturally, these allegations (actually, I think the son-in-law was already found guilty) have placed the President under certain scruple, with many questioning his ethics. Consequently, an up-rising has formed, spearheaded by formerly strong supporters of the presidential party, to depose Chen of his position of power. So to add to the pan-blue (People's First Party) / pan-green (Democratic Progressive Party) political disputes that have been on-going over the past decade, now we have red (Anti-Chen) versus green (Pro-Chen). The last couple of months have seen thousands upon thousands (if not millions) of protestors rallying against the President, telling him to step down.

Back to Taiwan's National Day. With all the protests, this year's celebration would be a messy one. And it was. Massive swarms of people wearing red came to show their disappreciation of Chen. There were some little scrums and shouting, but I don't think anything got too far out of control.

Chen Shui-Bian also proposed yesterday of cancelling all future National Day celebrations due to the protests.

"Because this kind of national day celebration raises so much conflict, and so many people attend the event not to celebrate but to pursue their political agenda, A-bian [Chen's nickname] suggests that the necessity of the event be reviewed, with the possibility of canceling it in future," Chen said in his national day address to the crowd, which included foreign dignitaries and overseas Taiwanese.

Well, I'm glad I didn't attend the "celebrations", and instead spent a couple hours in the afternoon playing foosball. :)

The depicted photo shows "an anti-Chen protester dressed as the character 'V' from the film 'V for Vendetta' carries posters yesterday comparing Chen and Chinese President Hu Jintao to Adolf Hitler."

Related articles:
Protests, violence mar national day
Chen defiant as lawmaker foes protest