The Legislative Yuan's confirmation of Wu Rong-ming (吳容明) as vice president of the Examination Yuan on Friday was a victory for President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) -- but it also served to weaken the opposition's ability to stand in the way of Chen and his administration.
"The People First Party's (PFP) decision not to oppose Wu's nomination has weakened the party's strategy of treating Chen's administration as a `false authority,' and deepened disagreements in the pan-blue alliance," said Hu Wen-huei (胡文輝), a political columnist.
Hu said that the president's decision to promote Wu -- who served as deputy governor of Taiwan Province while PFP Chairman James Soong (
Hu said that the opposition had in effect surrendered to Chen.
"Since the PFP and the KMT both endorsed the nomination, opposition legislators have to temporarily tone down their attacks on the legitimacy of the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) government," Hu said.
Suggesting that the DPP committed election fraud and might have staged the election-eve assassination attempt against Chen, the opposition parties have refused to accept their defeat in the presidential election and have strongly protested Chen's new Cabinet.
Lin Chin-chang (
"The president can seize this opportunity to allow his Cabinet to move forward with its policies, which have been shunted aside for a long time in the Legislative Yuan," Lin said.
Saying that the Examination Yuan is actually a "ready-to-be-abolished" organization, DPP legislative caucus whip Tsai Huang-liang (
"In the future, when Chen tries to express goodwill to KMT members, especially members of the so-called `localization faction,' and even seeks cooperation with certain KMT heavyweights, the PFP will have no excuse for opposing him," Tsai said.
"Such a situation would benefit the DPP in the year-end legislative elections," Tsai said.
Lin Chin-chang said that the confirmation also reflected the president's view on how to exercise his duty in his second term.
"Because of the pressure he was under to win re-election, Chen during his first term devoted a lot of time to grassroots politics and attended a great number of public events," Lin said, going on to explain that Chen will devote himself more to international affairs in his second term.
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
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