President Chen Shui-bian (
"We need Premier Yu to stay at his post and lead the government in its endeavors to complete all the reforms," Chen said after visiting Yu's mother, Huang Hsiu-chu (黃秀菊), who is being treated at National Taiwan University Hospital.
A source at the Presidential Office told reporters that the president's confidence in Yu remained unchanged, as demonstrated by the show of unity at the hospital.
"Criticism from opposition politicians recently will not have any impact on the president's trust in Premier Yu," the source said, "and President Chen will give his full support as usual to allow Yu to implement a small-scale Cabinet reshuffle."
The source added that the president and premier have also reached a consensus on improving the efficiency of the civil service system and reorganizing the country's grassroots credit departments.
"After winning power in 2000, we have been very careful in arranging the government's personnel," the source said. "President Chen nominated the premier and jointly organized the Cabinet but rarely put DPP members in high-ranking official positions. Instead, these positions were filled with officials from the civil service system."
He said that Chen wanted to avoid being accused of "rewarding the party with government re-sources" but that the opposition parties still attacked the DPP for the government's performance during the past two-and-a-half years.
"Therefore, since the farmers and fishermen expressed their strong feelings to the government, President Chen decided to authorize Premier Yu to reform the whole civil service system, despite any possible accusations about political rewards," he said.
Though Yu's decision to stay on as premier seems to have saved Chen from a political crisis, many senior DPP leaders expressed their doubts about Chen's leadership and credibility.
"The failure of the Cabinet's financial reforms of grassroots credit departments should be mainly attributed to President Chen's one-man decision-making style," said Lee Chun-yee (
"The party's Central Standing Committee members have lost their ability to offer suggestions to President Chen [who is also DPP chairman] and failed to coordinate the Cabinet and grassroots power," Lee said.
DPP legislative caucus leader Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) urged the president to consider setting up a crisis-management mechanism, which would include a task force to help the president evaluate crucial policy alternatives.
The DPP's New Tide faction, the party's largest, appealed to Chen to "seriously review the cooperation model with former president Lee Teng-hui (
"President Chen needs to draw a line between the DPP government and Lee," DPP Legislator Tuan Yi-kang (
What the party can't forget is that it was Lee who first raised the public's anger by accusing the government of trying to eliminate the farmers and fishermen, he said, but then Lee attacked Chen's administration for knowing nothing but how to run election campaigns.
However, other party leaders warned against inflaming conflict in the "Bian-Lee relationship," saying more debate on the issue would only help opposition politicians further undermine the harmony between the ruling DPP and the TSU, over which Lee has a great deal of influence.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods