Cabinet calls on city to revoke demonstration permit

The Cabinet plans to ask the Taipei City Government to revoke the permit for a demonstration by the pan-blue camp next Saturday, arguing the rally might get out of control.

"We'll issue a letter to the city [today] requesting that it invalidate the application already approved by the city's police headquarters," Cabinet Secretary-General Liu Shih-fang (劉世芳) said.

The blue camp held a demonstration last Saturday that ended in violence.

The alliance says next Saturday's rally on Ketagalan Boulevard will be its last.

Liu said she phoned Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) at around 9pm Saturday to express the Cabinet's wish that the city "handle the illegal mass demonstration outside the Presidential Office in accordance with the law."

She said that she told Ma the city should consider revoking the pan-blue alliance's permit for next Saturday's rally given that there were problems with last Saturday's protest.

"Mayor Ma repeatedly told me not to worry about it," she said. "I told [him] the premier was very unhappy about how the city had handled the matter when I called him again at around 1:45 [yesterday morning], a few minutes after city police started to scatter the crowd by force."

The crowd was supposed to disperse from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall by midnight but instead proceeded illegally to the Presidential Office and clashed with police.

After failing to persuade the crowd to disperse, municipal law enforcement officers resorted to force at around 1:30am. The crowd then proceeded to the nearby headquarters of the Chinese Nationalist Party at around 5am.

Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲), who is responsible for the National Police Administration, faxed a personal letter to the city government requesting that municipal police disperse the crowd before 1am or move aside to let national police do the job.

The city and the minister's office held three press conferences within an hour early yesterday morning to criticize each other.

The city argued that the ministry did not have the right to give orders to the special municipality, whose administrative status is on a par with the that of the ministry. The ministry, however, said the central government was merely trying to help.

Liu also confirmed yesterday that Yu Cheng-hsien had tendered his resignation to Premier Yu Shyi-kun in person at noon yesterday but may agree to stay on until next month, when the premier will lead Cabinet officials to resign en masse in accordance with the Constitution.

"The premier is considering the minister's resignation and the overall Cabinet line-up," Liu said.

According to Liu, Yu Cheng-hsien offered his resignation verbally on March 19, the day of the attempted assassination of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

Yu Shyi-kun, however, had persuaded Yu Cheng-hsien to stay on because of the upcoming presidential election.

Yu Chen-hsien is scheduled to hold a press conference today at which he is expected to express his determination to leave.