President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is scheduled to respond to the opposition-initiated recall motion tonight, not as a rebuttal statement made directly to the legislature, but in a public address to the nation.
"The president has decided to deal with the matter in a responsible manner," said Presidential Office Secretary-General Mark Chen (陳唐山). "He will report directly to the people at 8pm at the auditorium of the Presidential Office and the event will be broadcast live on TV."
Mark Chen made the remark yesterday afternoon while attending an event held by the Presidential Office press corps.
The legislature is scheduled to kick off its four-day review of the recall proposal tomorrow and vote on it next Tuesday.
The motion is considered unlikely to pass given the high threshold required -- two-thirds support in the legislature and a majority of eligible voters in a nationwide referendum -- but the pan-blue camp has said it hopes to pressure the president into resigning.
Mark Chen said the president would respond point by point to the "10 crimes" listed by the opposition as a justification for their recall motion.
The accusations include corruption, abuse of power, instigation of political confrontation, obstruction of justice, suppression of the media and incompetent governance of the country.
Describing the 10 justifications as "irrational," Mark Chen said that the pan-blue alliance had used them to first deceive themselves and then try to convince the public that they were legitimate.
As no evidence has proven that the first family are guilty of any corruption, Mark Chen said the pan-blue camp had to come up with flimsy rationales such as "incompetence" for the recall.
"Recalling the president is a serious matter, but the pan-blue camp is using the recall bid to pursue their political agenda at the expense of national stability and people's livelihood," he said.
Mark Chen also criticized Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
"It not only reveals his political ambitions, but also threatens prosecutors and investigators to toe the line of the pan-blue camp or face retaliation if they come to power in 2008," he said.
Presidential Office Deputy Secretary-General Cho Jung-tai (
"I believe that the president will make his stance so clearly known that the media will not have any questions for him afterwards," he said, responding to media inquiry about whether there would be a question-and-answer session after the president's address.
While some of the corruption scandals implicating the first family and Chen's in-laws are still the subject of judicial processes, Cho said the president would not offer any details or analysis of those cases but would instead make known his own position and attitude.
"The corruption allegations will be a focal point of his public address, but not the only focus," Cho said.
He added he hoped the president's public address would help usher in a more harmonious atmosphere to the political arena.
"We hope the opposition parties will be more cooperative after listening to the president's explanation," Cho said. "We'd like to see them focus their attention on passing bills concerning people's livelihood and hopefully, cancel the scheduled review sessions and votes."
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