President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday pledged to seek social consensus when handling major ethnic issues, including the 228 Incident and a proposed renaming of the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.
The president asked the Ministry of Education (MOE) to organize a public forum and seek consensus on issues related to the title of the hall and promised to continue funding the 228 Memorial Foundation with an annual budget of NT$300 million (US$9.2 million).
IMPORTANT PROCESS
“The process of handling these issues is as important as the results. Some people are more concerned about the process, so we should make decisions by reaching a consensus rather than through a vote,” Ma said while addressing a meeting of education and interior ministry officials at the Presidential Office.
FOUNDATION’S FUTURE
The meeting was called by the president to address the future of the government-funded 228 Memorial Foundation and the controversy surrounding the name of the hall.
Vice Premier Paul Chiu (邱正雄), Executive Yuan Secretary-General Hsueh Hsiang-chuan (薛香川) and education and interior ministry officials, including Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城) and Minister Without Portfolio Ovid Tzeng (曾志朗), attended the meeting.
In addition to the foundation’s annual budget, Ma also promised to establish regulations to legitimize the establishment of the 228 National Museum, Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said.
CRITICISM
The foundation was critical of the Ma administration after the legislature, dominated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), froze its budget last year and then refused to grant a budget for this year.
Ma, who has been seeking support from 228 Incident victims since serving as Taipei mayor, said the government would make up for the previous budget cuts by providing an annual budget starting next year and vowed to continue funding the foundation until the government had paid the NT$1.5 billion the foundation had been promised by the previous administration.
Wang said the president also asked the Executive Yuan to apply to the legislature to unfreeze the 2007 budget for the foundation.
The 228 Incident refers to an uprising against the KMT that began on Feb. 28, 1947, and was followed by a bloody crackdown, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.
On the controversies surrounding the hall, Wang said the MOE’s plan to replace the name plaque with the original Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall plaque remained unchanged and that the replacement would be done in accordance with the law.
OTHER ISSUES
On other issues relating to the hall — including whether to change the title back to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the future of the Liberty Square inscription at the entrance — Ma asked the MOE to organize a public forum before July to attempt to seek a consensus before making any decisions, Wang said
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS