Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday criticized Premier Yu Shyi-kun for what she said was his lack of ability and courage in failing to take the responsibility for the grassroots financial reform mess.
Lu said Yu's mishandling of the affair has resulted in President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) becoming the scapegoat for the policy failure.
"The man with power just hid behind and left the responsibility for the blame on the man who does not have the power," Lu said.
She made the remarks while receiving a delegation of certified accountants from Taiwan and the US at the Presidential Office yesterday morning.
Yu submitted his resignation to Chen last Friday, vowing to shoulder the responsibility for the grassroots financial reforms.
Chen visited Yu's residence Saturday night to persuade the premier to stay on the job to accomplish those reforms.
Although Chen expressed gratitude to Yu after the premier retracted his resignation on Sunday, Lu condemned Yu for what she said was his incompetence which had led to the president becoming the target of public criticism.
Lu said that the huge demonstration by farmers and fishermen in Taipei last Saturday had actually lost its focus and was a result of malicious political mobilization.
"Most of those farmers and fishermen do not oppose the government's plan to reorganize the credit departments of the farmers' and fishermen's associations, but they just took on the streets to urge the government to protect their rights in face of Taiwan's entry into the World Trade Organization," Lu said.
"But a handful of members, who control the credit departments and created the non-performing loan problems, manipulated those innocent people into boycotting the government's financial reforms," she said.
Lu said that the Executive Yuan had failed to properly evaluate the situation and ease grassroots-level anger.
Therefore, she said, Chen had no choice but to jump to the forefront to solve the crisis.
"Farmers and fishermen insisted on joining the protest because they are worried about their livelihoods," Lu said.
"If the Executive Yuan had properly communicated with the heads of local governments in dealing with these issues, the situation would not have gone so far."
"The media always blames the president for his policymaking. However, people should understand who is actually in charge of the Cabinet, including the Council of Agriculture," she said.
"The president finally stood on the front line because he could not allow the situation to worsen," she said.
Commenting on the search for new chiefs for the Council of Agriculture and Ministry of Finance, Lu urged the public to recommend the best candidates to Yu. She also urged Yu to recruit real talent instead of acquaintances.
"We can't accept the nomination of a Hakka as the head of the council just because the outgoing chairman is a Hakka," she said.
Lu said the next council chief should not only have expertise in agricultural economics but also have experience in international marketing .
Reacting to Lu's criticism, Yu told reporters he would "accept criticism from anyone" and would respect Lu's suggestions about the new Cabinet members.
"No one should blame the wrong person," the premier said. "The Executive Yuan should assume full responsibility."
"I also expect the media to give me more time to look for suitable candidates," he said.
Yu made the comments after a meeting of the DPP's Central Standing Committee. Yu told reporters that he and Chen had agreed that professional capabilities should be the prime factor in choosing Cabinet candidates.
(with additional reporting by staff reporter Lin Mei-chun)
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
‘GROWING UP TOGETHER’: Jensen Huang celebrated the nation’s role in the formation of the tech firm at a Silicon Valley gathering, saying ‘Taiwan saved Nvidia’ Taiwan is in the center of the new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) told a gathering with Taiwanese on Thursday in Silicon Valley’s largest city, San Jose. Tainan-born Huang said it must be celebrated that “Taiwan is right in the middle” of a new industrial revolution in which “something new is being made, and made in a new way.” Huang recalled the manufacturing process of the RIVA 128 graphics processing unit, Nvidia’s first commercial success, describing it as the “most complicated chip at the time.” As Nvidia did not have the budget, he wrote a letter to Taiwan