Although the delay of the Suao-Hualien freeway construction project may have limited impact on the voting intentions of Hualien County's electorate during next March's presidential poll, political observers yesterday warned that the incident may deliver a deadly blow to the image of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration.
"The incident gives the public the impression that the DPP administration reneges easily on its promises and crudely maps out its policies," said Ger Yeong-kuang (葛永光), a professor of political science at National Taiwan University.
Ger's opinion was echoed by Wang Yeh-lih (王業立), chairman of the Department of Political Science at Tunghai University in Taichung.
"The government should've taken into account opposing opinions during its decision-making process, instead of churning out pork-barrel policies to woo the electorate or changing its tack at the last minute," he said.
"It makes the public wonder whether the other nine projects will also end up this way," he said.
The NT$96.2 billion project is one of the 10 new construction projects included in the five-year, NT$500 billion public construction package, which the Cabinet wants approved by the legislature.
While the Cabinet has sent the special bill pertaining to the project to the legislature, the Cabinet is scheduled to approve the NT$500 billion special budget on Wednesday.
Although political columnist Hu Wen-huei (胡文輝) agreed that the controversy has limited regional impact, he said, however, that it does not necessarily create a negative image for the DPP as a whole.
"The decision was made, after all, under local pressure," he said.
Bowing to pressure exerted by local environmentalists, Premier Yu Shyi-kun announced on Thursday that the Cabinet will delay the construction of the 86km freeway connecting Suao, Ilan County and Hualien County for three months, despite his pledge to kick off the project by the end of the year.
Irked by the Cabinet's "policy U-turn," opposition lawmakers charged on Friday that the project had been put on hold for political gain in an attempt to attract votes from local environmentalists.
The idea of constructing a freeway in eastern Taiwan was first proposed by the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in 1990 as part of a plan to build an island-wide freeway system.
The KMT government mapped out the plan for the Suao-Hualien Freeway in January 2000, two months before the DPP won the presidential election.
The Environmental Protection Administration approved an impact study in June 2000, and the DPP administration announced in December last year that construction would start this month.
In addition to the controversy surrounding the NT$500 project, the Cabinet is gearing up efforts to win over independent lawmakers to underpin its veto motion of certain articles of the just-passed Referendum Law (
The opposition KMT has alleged that the Cabinet is using the construction project as a bargaining chip to court independents, who play a decisive role in the plan-blue dominated legislature.
If the allegation proves true, Ger said that the public will be very disappointed with the DPP administration, which boasts of a clean political record.
"It's pathetic that the government publicly bribes the lawmaking body in exchange for passing its initiatives," he said.
Ger also agreed with the pan-blue alliance's allegation that the Cabinet's plan to nullify part of the Referendum Law is aimed at blocking a referendum on the partially constructed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant alongside the presidential poll.
Hu said that Chen might not want to put the fate of the nuclear power plant to a popular vote, but he may have to eventually put his promise into practice.
Seeking to placate former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), who is a die-hard anti-nuclear activist, Chen has vowed, before the Referendum Law was enacted, to hold an advisory referendum on March 20 to decide the fate of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, among other topics.
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