The Presidential Office and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday agreed that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) will hold a live TV debate on the cross-strait service trade agreement on Sept. 15.
The two-hour debate, to be hosted by the Taiwan Public Television Service Foundation, will start at 2pm. Ma and Su will each ask and respond to four questions and issue four additional rebuttals; there will be no question-and-answer session with the media, Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) and the DPP’s Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said yesterday in announcing the debate format at the TV station after a closed-door meeting.
Lo said that negotiations on the debate date and format between the Presidential Office and the DPP went smoothly, and the two sides agreed to most of the organizer’s proposal.
Asked whether Ma was confident about performing well in the debate, Lo said the key to the debate is to discuss the potential positive and negative impacts of the pact on the nation.
“People will have a better understanding of the agreement through the debate, and they should be the judge [of the president’s performance] in the debate,” Lo said.
The debate format is similar to the previous debate on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in 2010 between Ma and then-DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), which had included a media Q&A session.
The Presidential Office and the KMT have accused Su of turning down a Q&A with the media during the live debate, saying the DPP chairman was trying to shun media scrutiny.
As the government is striving to win public support for the pact, Ma readily agreed to the proposed debate when the idea was raised last week.
He said it should help the public understand the agreement, and a Q&A with reporters would give the government more opportunities to explain the pact.
Tsai Chi-chang, the main negotiator of a four-member DPP team, said: “We were glad the negotiation went smoothly, and we have full confidence that Chairman Su, as the leader of the main opposition party, will be able to speak for the Taiwanese people.”
The other DPP representatives were the party’s Policy Research Committee deputy executive director Huang Chih-ta (黃致達), Department of Communication deputy director Chang Li-ke (張力可) and spokesperson Wang Min-shen (王閔生).
However, the Presidential Office disagreed with the DPP’s proposal to make the debate “the 17th public hearing” following the 16 public hearings that are scheduled to be held by the legislature on various service sub-sectors that would be affected by the trade agreement, Tsai Chi-chang said.
The media Q&A, which the DPP had vetoed, was not mentioned during the negotiation, he added.
Discussion about a potential debate on the agreement resurfaced following the latest survey released by the Chinese-language China Times earlier last week, which showed that 63 percent of respondents agreed that Ma and Su should hold a debate over the agreement.
The service trade agreement was inked on June 21 in Shanghai by the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits as part of the ECFA.
Additional reporting by Chris Wang
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS