The revived political frenzy over the Lafayette frigate scandal has served more to sharpen partisan rivalry than enlighten the public on the decade-old arms deal involving huge kickbacks to key officials in Taiwan, China and France.
The unsolved murder in 1993 of former navy captain Ying Ching-feng (尹清楓) is also believed to have stemmed from the scam.
Over the past week, the DPP has demanded PFP Chairman James Soong (
DPP officials insisted that Soong, who worked as KMT secretary-general between 1989 and 1993, might have distributed the US$400 million in kickbacks that French foreign minister Roland Dumas alleges was paid to the ruling party at the time.
The allegations made in a recent interview have jolted political circles.
Soong has denied any involvement and said that former president Lee Teng-hui (
The PFP chair also accused President Chen Shui-bian (
Meanwhile, self-syled military analysts have appeared on TV talk shows making unsubstantiated revelations implicating former and current officials along the blue-green divide.
Hoping to help sort out the mess, the legislative Judiciary Committee has invited chiefs from the ministries of justice, foreign affairs, national defense and finance to a meeting tomorrow.
TSU Legislator Su Ying-kwei (
Others say the inactivity has more to do with government concerns about potential political and military fallout.
The meeting is bound to draw intense media attention, though committee members say they do not expect it to add much that was new.
DPP legislative whip Chen Chi-mai (
The Judiciary Committee is responsible for overseeing the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan.
On the invitation list is Minister of Foreign Ministry Eugene Chien (
Former Ministry of Finance officials are also suspected of having played a role in the arms deal in an attempt to woo French support for Taiwan's entry to the WTO.
The two ministries will probably send deputy heads to the committee meeting, Chen Chi-mai said.
"No matter who shows up, it is unlikely the committee can learn of any breakthrough,"he said.
PFP legislative leader Chiu-yi (
"More likely than not, the Lafayette uproar will turn out to be little more than another bout of blue-green feuding," Chiu said.
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
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
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