Premier Frank Hsieh (
Despite the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)'s failure to vote out Wang Jin-pyng (
"I will not try to contact any individual from the opposition parties without going through the parties' headquarters first, out of respect," Hsieh said when the media asked him whether he was still looking for a vice premier from the opposition camp.
"Since the opposition parties have claimed that none of their members can become Cabinet officials without the parties' consent first, if I want to find someone from the opposition party, I will have to reopen the door for cross-party negotiations, or I will visit the chairmen of the opposition parties [to talk about the matter]," Hsieh said.
When asked about whether he had a candidate in mind, Hsieh said that as long as the candidate he asked considered himself to be suitable, then that candidate would be an appropriate choice.
"But right now I want to wait a few more days before settling on anyone," Hsieh said.
Hsieh made the statement right after he attended the Taiwan Solidarity Union inauguration ceremony for caucus whips at the Legislative Yuan, which took place after Wang was reelected speaker.
The TSU ceremony was also the first public meeting of the premier and new speaker.
According to a top KMT official, Hsieh was still keen to ask Chiang to become vice premier, and Chiang was also interested in the position.
The KMT has said that no KMT member can become a Cabinet official without the party's consent. Hsieh therefore asked Wang in private yesterday to help him persuade the KMT party headquarters to let Chiang take the appointment, according to the same official.
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