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.
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