Four candidates yesterday launched a battle to lead Ireland’s governing party after troubled Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen quit the post following a series of crises that forced him to announce snap polls.
Micheal Martin, the foreign minister whose departure crippled Cowen’s authority, was the odds-on favorite to win the contest and take the Fianna Fail party into a general election that polls predict they will lose heavily.
He is up against Irish Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan, Minister for Defence Eamon O Cuiv and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation Mary Hanafin, who also wasted no time in declaring their candidacy before today’s 1pm deadline.
Cowen stepped down on Saturday after a week of political turmoil. Despite surviving a confidence vote among his party’s lawmakers on Tuesday last week, his authority had evaporated and was further damaged by a botched Cabinet reshuffle that followed.
The prime minister said he had quit so that Fianna Fail could be “free from internal distractions” to fight the election scheduled for March 11.
He said he was nonetheless staying on as prime minister to focus on getting key budget laws passed to cement an EU-IMF bailout to revive Ireland’s battered economy.
However, Cowen’s government faces a confidence motion in parliament tomorrow and the independent lawmakers on whom his coalition relies for a thin majority are threatening to turn against him too.
That would trigger the dissolution of parliament and an election even earlier than the March 11 date he announced last week.
“Taking everything into account and having discussed the matter with my family, I have decided on my own counsel to step down as uachtarain [president] of Fianna Fail and leader of Fianna Fail,” Cowen told a hastily arranged news conference in a cramped Dublin hotel room. “I will continue in my role as taoiseach as I have before.”
Martin, 50, had publicly called for Cowen to quit before last week’s vote and stepped down from his foreign ministry brief afterwards.
He said he was to spend yesterday setting out before colleagues his vision for reviving the party.
“I believe I have the energy and the passion and the commitment to make a difference in terms of how we organize ourselves and in terms how we develop and formulate policies for the future,” he said.
Irish bookmaker Paddy Power had Martin as the 1/12 runaway favorite. Lenihan, who is battling pancreatic cancer, was 11/2. O Cuiv was 16/1, with Hanafin 18/1.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique