The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus yesterday requested that Premier Frank Hsieh (
They also threatened to establish a commission of inquiry under the legislature and a truth-finding taskforce under the caucus to expose "corrupt practices."
Upset that government officials invited by the KMT to a breakfast meeting yesterday had sent "low ranking" representatives, the caucus vowed to freeze the annual budgets of their agencies until the "truth" of the matter came out.
Yesterday's meeting was stalled for 45 minutes before KMT lawmakers agreed to proceed in the absence of "high-ranking officials" who had been invited to the meeting, including Council of Labor Affairs Chairwoman Chen Chu (陳菊) and Vice Minister of Transportation and Communications and former director-general of Kaohsiung City's Department of Rapid Transit System Chou Li-liang (周禮良).
Both Chen and Chou sent proxies instead.
KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) and independent Legislator Chiu Yi (
Chiu and KMT Legislator Lwo Shih-hsiung (
The legislature will reconvene in the middle of this month.
Chen tendered her resignation yesterday, saying she wanted to take responsibility for the riot.
KMT caucus whip John Wu (吳志揚) called on Chen to stay on, saying that her resignation and Hsieh's remark on Saturday calling for the legislature to lodge a no-confidence vote were postering to divert attention from the government's recent blunders.
Wu asked that Hsieh face the matter head on and threatened to boycott the premier's scheduled report to the legislature.
Meanwhile, Cabinet Spokesman Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday said the premier would cooperate with prosecutors investigating the Thai workers' riot.
"The premier will definitely help prosecutors whenever necessary," Cho said.
According to the spokesman, Kaohsiung prosecutors are trying to discover whether bribes were used in the process of hiring and importing Thai workers to build the city's MRT. Also, they are trying to figure out who started the riot and have begun to summon the workers who were involved.
In the meantime, Minister Without Portfolio Hsu Chih-hsiung (
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:
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