Next month’s nine-in-one election results are anyone’s guess, but political circles in Taipei are already embroiled in a battle over the premiership.
The cause of this battle is the ongoing food security issues, which have caused great public alarm.
Although the government has said it will handle the situation, it is yet to show how. The tainted cooking oil scandal is spreading like a disease, from Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) to Namchow Group (南僑集團), as problems have been found with lard, tallow and vegetable oil products.
From the processing plants, the affected products have reached bakeries, buffet restaurants and roadside stalls, affecting almost everyone. Food safety has become a universal concern, but the government seems incapable of solving the problem and instead repeatedly implies that there are solutions in the pipeline.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) said in a legislative interpellation session two weeks ago that no problems had been found with Ting Hsin cooking oils and that they were fit for human consumption. Less than two weeks later, it was revealed that Ting Hsin mixed oil for industrial use and animal feed with cooking oil, throwing the nation into a state of fright. It would not be asking too much for the premier step down to take responsibility.
A recent survey released by Taiwan Indicator Survey Research showed that Jiang has a 66 percent disapproval rating for his performance as premier, while a mere 15.6 percent said he is doing a good job. This is a record disapproval rating, worse than those of former premiers Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), at 65 percent, and Sean Chen (陳沖), at 59 percent.
The result is causing problems for the Cabinet’s policy implementation, and Jiang’s worst-case scenario would see him become targeted by opposition attacks and step down to take responsibility for a poor election-season performance.
It is not only the opposition that is putting pressure on Jiang to step down: Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are also outspoken on the issue, with Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆) saying food safety is a fundamental public demand and “if this is not handled properly, the premier must step down.”
KMT Legislator Lu Chia-chen (盧嘉辰) has said that “if there are any more slip-ups, stepping down is the only choice.”
These statements were followed by allegations that Namchow added industrial oil to its cooking oil.
Although President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is vigorously backing Jiang and — at a ceremony handing over the reins of the party’s legislative caucus to new officials on Wednesday — called on KMT legislators to support the Cabinet, public discontent is soaring, forcing KMT lawmakers to prioritize public opinion.
Furthermore, the run-up to the elections is a sensitive time, and as new food-security scandals are revealed, KMT candidates sense the public discontent and feel that a Cabinet reshuffle cannot wait until after the elections, because if it is not done now, they might go down with a sinking ship.
This is why KMT Taipei mayoral hopeful Sean Lien (連勝文) said that if he were the premier, he would step down, while his campaign director Alex Tsai (蔡正元) made a direct call for Jiang to step down.
There are also whispers in Taipei political circles that if Jiang steps down, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), a food sanitation specialist, would take over.
The battle within the KMT over the premier’s seat has begun.
Given the situation, it would not be excessive if Jiang stepped down. In fact, the sooner he does, the better. If the move were to be postponed until after next month’s elections, public worries would grow and the KMT would have to pay an even greater price.
An outrageous dismissal of the exemplary Taiwanese fight against COVID-19 has been perpetrated by the EU. There is no excuse. I presume that everyone who reads the Taipei Times knows that the EU has excluded Taiwan from its so-called “safe list,” which permits citizens unhindered travel to and from the countries of the EU. As the EU does not feel that it needs to explain the character of this exclusive list, perhaps we should examine it ourselves in some detail. There are 14 nations on the list that have been chosen as safe countries of origin and safe countries of destination for
Filmmakers in Taiwan used to struggle when it came to telling a story that could resonate internationally. Things started to change when the 2017 drama series The Teenage Psychic (通靈少女), a collaboration between HBO Asia and Taiwanese Public Television Service (PTS), became a huge hit not just locally, but also internationally. The coming-of-age story was adapted from the 2013 PTS-produced short film The Busy Young Psychic (神算). Entirely filmed in Taiwan, the Mandarin-language series even made it on HBO’s streaming platforms in the US. It is proof that a well-told Taiwanese story can absolutely win the hearts and minds of hard-to-please
Drugged with sedatives, handcuffed and wearing a bright orange prison tunic, British fraud investigator and former journalist Peter Humphrey was escorted by warders into an interrogation room filled with reporters, locked inside a steel cage and fastened to a metal “tiger chair.” Humphrey recalls: “I was completely surrounded by officers, dazed, manacled and with cameras pointing at me through the bars. I was fighting for my life like a caged animal. It was horrifying.” Footage from the interrogation was later artfully edited to give the appearance of a confession and broadcast on Chinese state media. While this might sound like an
The US House of Representatives on July 1 passed by unanimous consent a bipartisan bill that would penalize Chinese officials who implement Beijing’s new national security legislation in Hong Kong, as well as banks that do business with them. The following day, the US Senate unanimously passed the bill, which was later sent to the White House, where it awaits US President Donald Trump’s signature. The bill does not spell out what the sanctions would look like and Trump has yet to sign it into law, but Reuters on Thursday last week reported that five major Chinese state lenders are considering
RSS