People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
"While it is impossible to restore the Taiwan Provincial Government as a whole, we would, however, consider and review the need to restore some of its mechanisms to better take care of people's needs and fight problems," Soong said, without explaining which functions he favored restoring.
Soong made the remarks in a speech at the launch of PFP Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang's (
The book describes the rise of the provincial government and the process by which amendments to the Constitution eliminated it.
PFP spokesman Hwang Yih-jiau (黃義交) said later that Soong didn't explain his remarks further because timing and Soong's current position meant it would be inappropriate.
"What Soong meant was that, if certain functions within the Taiwan Provincial Government were restored, such as ones overseeing the water and electricity supply, transport and so on, they could provide the linkage that would allow the government to efficiently solve people's problems," Hwang said.
Soong became the first and only directly elected governor of Taiwan Province in 1993.
His position was eliminated in 1998 after a National Development Council meeting in 1996 which suggested that the federal structure be downsized and the provincial government abolished.
"The Taiwan Provincial Government was an efficient government body. It was a mistake to abolish the Taiwan Provincial Government then," Soong told the audience, which included several former National Assembly representatives.
"Now many people are thinking that the abolishment of the Taiwan Provincial Government disturbed Taiwan's political structure and the government's ability to implement measures efficiently," Soong said.
At the book presentation, Lu praised Soong's efficiency in tackling problems as governor and took the opportunity to attack then-president Lee Teng-hui's (李登輝) decision to abolish the post.
"The purpose of the book is to unmask Lee's image as `Mr. Democracy' or the `Father of Taiwan,'" said Lu, who was a two-term National Assembly representative and was among those who disagreed with the elimination of the provincial government.
Lu wrote in the book that he believed Lee's decision to abolish the provincial government was in part a political move meant to undermine Soong's power base and promote Lee's personal political agenda -- the most important element of which was an independent Taiwan.
Saying that Lee's decision had killed the nation's most efficient governing body and thus contributed to the loss of competitiveness that can be seen today, Lu claimed that Lee loves Taiwan only by words while Soong, in his capacity as provincial governor attending to people's concerns, loves Taiwan through deeds.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has