With the new administration beginning May 20, President-elect Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) Cabinet is almost complete, Vice Premier-designate Yu Shyi-kun confirmed yesterday.
Yu said Tsai Ying-wen (蔡英文) is to become chairperson of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and Shea Jia-dong (許嘉棟) the Minister of Finance.
Yu made the announcement of the lineup of the new Cabinet yesterday and confirmed there were only six posts left to fill: the Department of Health, Environmental Protection Administration, National Youth Commission, Council for Economic Planning and Development, Atomic Energy Council and National Sports Council.
Yu said that the still-vacant Cabinet posts would be filled by the end of the month and be announced by Premier-designate Tang Fei (唐飛), who is currently recuperating from an operation for the removal of a thymus gland cyst.
When pressed by reporters to reveal more details, Yu said: "There is no need to keep guessing, all I can tell you is what has been decided."
Most of the names officially confirmed yesterday had already been tipped for the posts by the media.
Tsai's nomination by the president-elect as the head of the MAC had been leaked 10 days ago, but was not officially confirmed until yesterday.
The reason given for the delay was said to be Tang's hesitancy about the appointment, a source said.
Some media reports said that Tsai was in the ad hoc advisory group that drafted the "special state-to-state" interpretation,of cross-strait relations for President Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
However, another source said there was no such group but only informal gatherings of close aides to Lee, and that the "special state-to-state" model was more of a general concept than an elaborately planned strategy.
Shea is currently deputy governor of the Central Bank of China.
"It was my sense of responsibility for society and the country that made me take the post," said Shea at a news conference last night.
Meanwhile, the newly-confirmed head of the Aboriginal Affairs Commission, Yahani Isagagafat (尤哈尼.伊斯卡卡夫特), an Aboriginal rights activist, said that he was taking the new job because he cared about the welfare of his people. He is currently the chief of general affairs at Yushan College of Theology.
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
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
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
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