Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday told the legislature that it is not up to him to decide whether he will stay in his job after the Dec. 3 elections.
"Whatever happens to me will be fine. As long as I keep the right attitude, if I have to step down in the future, it would be because the heavens think it is good for me," Hsieh said.
Saying that he currently has no plans to resign, the premier added that he will definitely "make adjustments" to his Cabinet team, although he has not yet made any specific decisions.
The premier made the remarks in response to questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Ching-hua (
Hsieh acknowledged that he has not enjoyed good relations with the legislative body, but said he still believes in the value of "reconciliation and symbiosis" -- ideas he advocated when he was appointed by President Chen Shui-bian (
In response to another question from Lee, Hsieh denied that he had criticized Government Information Office (GIO) Minister Pasuya Yao (
"I have never criticized any of my Cabinet members for `showing off like a hero,'" Hsieh said.
"But I have said that the Cabinet should work as a team. Any form of heroism will not be allowed in the team," he said.
Lee said that he read about the premier's alleged criticism in the local press, although he could not find any record of this on the GIO's Web site. He questioned whether the content of the record could have been manipulated.
Yao said that he had no idea whether the file on the Web site had been modified.
The query came in response to a story in the Chinese-language United Daily News on Thursday which said that Hsieh was very upset with Yao during last week's legislative meeting after an angry Yao decided to leave the review meeting at which the GIO budget for next year was discussed.
Yao stormed out after KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (
Yao later returned to the meeting, during which the GIO's budget was dramatically slashed.
According to the report, Hsieh had expressed his unhappiness with Yao during the legislative meeting.
The report quoted Hsieh as criticizing Yao for "showing off like a hero" and complaining that his behavior would cause monetary problems for the GIO next year.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater