Opposition lawmakers urged Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday to redeem himself by applying himself fully to his job after he agreed to remain at his post on the urging of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
KMT whip at the Legislative Yuan Lee Chuan-chiao (
Lee Chuan-chiao lauded the finance minister, whose policy triggered the demonstration of fishermen and farmers on Saturday, as a finance expert and credited Fan for calming down the protesters, which lead to Saturday's demonstration ending peacefully.
Although the premier was retained, Lee Chuan-chiao said, he is now no more than a caretaker or a lame duck.
Even as a caretaker, Yu should not sit idly on his hands, as long as he is still the head of the Cabinet, Lee said, adding he could make up for his mistakes in the botched financial reform plan by driving down the unemployment rate and improving social order; otherwise, the KMT will ask him to leave.
Another KMT lawmaker, Mu Ming-chu (穆閩珠), said the repeated shakeups of the Cabinet formed by the DPP will inevitably damage the government's credibility and efficiency.
Citing the government's statistics, Mu said 28 Cabinet agencies have a leadership change twice, and 10 have seen their chiefs replaced three times in the last two years after the DPP took power.
Meanwhile, a KMT official unveiled his party's eight-point proposal to sort out the problems surrounding the grassroots banks.
Tzeng Yung-chuan (曾永權), executive director of the KMT Central Policy Coordinating Commission, said his party is calling for the reinstatement of the 36 grassroots banks taken over by commercial banks last year after they had accumulated more bad loans than their assets.
The KMT's proposal also calls for full acceptance by the government of the demands made by the farmers and fishermen.
The KMT's decision not to call for Yu's removal is in sync with public opinion as shown on polls commissioned by the party after Saturday's demonstration.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching