People First Party (PFP) Chairman James Soong (
"Leaders of opposition parties must have the moral courage and will to confront government corruption. Don't let A-bian [President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) nickname] belittle us," Soong said.
Soong was responding to a report in yesterday's Chinese-language newspaper the China Times, which said that Ma would stop staging demonstrations against the president after the vote tomorrow in the legislature.
It is expected that tomorrow's recall motion will fail, since two-thirds of the legislature must approve it and the pan-blue camp holds only a slim majority.
Soong said that "people expect the opposition parties to do something," noting that the PFP will push for a no-confidence vote in the premier if the recall motion fails.
According to the report, Ma met with seven pro-localization KMT legislators on June 20 and decided to take their advice, which was that the party should stop staging large-scale rallies after tomorrow's vote and should not support a no-confidence vote.
"We should halt street rallies after the recall vote because people really need to take a break from political confrontation between the pan-blue and pan-green camps," one of the legislators, Wang Yu-ting (王昱婷) said yesterday.
"The campaign to recall the president is supposed to relate to concerns about government corruption. But the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] has persuaded its supporters that it is a war against a localized Taiwanese government," she added.
Wang said that Ma should adopt a rational, middle-of-the-road line, so that the DPP will have no chance to distract attention away from the KMT's anti-corruption appeal. Wang noted that avoiding needless political confrontation would actually help bring government scandals into sharper focus.
Responding to the KMT legislators, Soong said that his party also stands for a rational, middle-of-the-road line.
But he said that this doesn't mean that opposition parties' leaders should remain ambiguous about "what's next" after the recall vote.
With the legislature's vote on the recall of the president to happen tomorrow, more people have joined a sit-in protest in front of the legislature led by Soong, who has been there for five straight days.
PFP Legislator Wu Ching-chih (
"It's a tragedy that the Taiwanese people have such a weak opposition party," he said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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