After an article in the latest edition of the Economist magazine called President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) a bumbler, politicians across party lines yesterday said that Ma should thoroughly reflect on his leadership and governance practices.
In the piece entitled “Ma the bumbler,” the global publication said that in addition to the dismal international economy, “Mr. Ma’s leadership is also to blame” for some of Taiwan’s problems.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Yang Li-huan (楊麗環) urged Ma, who is also the party’s chairman, to “give thorough reflection on what went wrong” instead of “being quick to come to his own defense as he always does” when people offer him suggestions.
The four-term KMT lawmaker said she considered Ma’s leadership “quite problematic.”
Ma’s office has been staffed with sycophants and he has always turned a deaf ear to what people outside his inner circle have told him, even the honest advice, Yang said.
The way Ma rules the country has hampered its progress and economic development, she said.
“He never listens to us and thinks that we complain because we were not offered government positions or because we simply disparage him. Now the criticism has come from abroad. I really hope that he can take things seriously,” she said.
KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) said the Ma administration should learn to discuss policy issues before making major decisions.
Ma has “headed in the right direction” with his reform plans, as evidenced by the price adjustments for electricity and fuel, the imposition of a tax on capital gains on shares and the limited coverage of year-end pension bonuses for government retirees, but the policies were “hastily enacted without due consideration of their impact and without input from lawmakers,” he said.
“The road to reform would not have been so hard if he had sufficiently recognized the importance of communication in the process of policy-making,” Chen said.
KMT Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said he held the same view as Chen did.
Taking the dual increase of fuel and electricity prices as an example, lawmakers would have suggested that prices be raised in stages or be implemented after Taiwan Power Co and CPC Corp, Taiwan improve their performance, he said.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) declined to comment on the article as he said that the Presidential Office had offered a response on Friday.
When asked for comments by the press, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) yesterday first appeared reticent to answer as he said he did not really know why the magazine ran the article.
However, soon after he said that the Economist is renowned for its credibility internationally and that “there must be some objective facts that lead it to come to the view [stated in the article.]”
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