Premier-designate Frank Hsieh (
"Since the DPP failed to win a majority in the legislature, I would like to leave the vice premier's post open and consult with the opposition alliance after the legislative session begins on Feb.1," he said.
PHOTO: CHANG CHUNG-YI, TAIPEI TIMES
"The parties are competing for the legislative speaker election on Feb.1, so relations between the parties are tense now. But after the speakership race, I hope we could achieve inter-party reconciliation and cooperation through party caucuses in the legislature," he said.
Hsieh said he did not have any particular candidate in mind, but "my deputy could be from the opposition, or a person from business or technology circles."
Asked if Deputy Legislative Speaker Chiang Pin-Kun (江丙坤) was still a candidate, Hsieh said he did not have a designated candidate, otherwise the opposition alliance would mistake him for someone who simply wanted to lure a member of the opposition into the Cabinet in order to divide it.
Hsieh had invited Chiang to serve as his deputy, but Chiang and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rejected the offer.
Hsieh said he will announce the names of the Cabinet secretary-general, director-general of the Central Personnel Administration and director-general of the Department of Health today.
Hsieh made the comments while he participated in a "National Cleaning Week" activity in Kaohsiung, where he also urged the public to clean up the environment before the Lunar New Year holiday.
Hsieh and acting Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (
Hsieh and acting DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang (
Hsieh, a former DPP chairman, said it is meaningless to compare the number of votes he received to be chairman with Su's because the party is twice as big as it was when he ran for the job. However, since Su is the only candidate, turnout might be low, he said.
Hsieh said he totally supports Su and the party because "when the party is strong, the government is strong too."
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
RSS