Former president Lee Teng-hui (
Saying that the country's democracy has come to a halt, Lee said the political bickering between the ruling and opposition parties had sent the government into an idle spin and impeded democratic development.
"During my 12 years as president, I've never seen such a thing as the legislature failing to pass the government budget by May," he said. "This is the first time in history."
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
Lee made the remarks before a group of Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) members who were staging a sit-in protest outside the legislature yesterday afternoon. They started the protest on May 3, urging the legislature to pass the budget and vowing to continue the sit-in until their demand is met.
As the legislature should have passed the budget by the end of last year, Lee urged Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Lee said it was quite ironic to see a sit-in protest against the legislature.
"I fought for Taiwan's democratization during my presidency, but now the budget is still bogged down in the legislature," he said.
"I have no idea what has happened to the nation's democratization," he said.
"Let's just hope the next president will be more competent," he said.
Lee said having a legislature would be meaningless if it failed to perform its duties.
"The Cabinet was so preoccupied with who would be running for president that it did not care whether or not the legislature passed the budget," he said.
Lee said he realized how difficult negotiations were, but the executive and legislative branches had to work together and forsake partisan interests.
"I'm 86 years old. If I don't say anything, it seems like nobody will," he said.
Meanwhile, Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) accused the legislature yesterday of "accomplishing nothing" over the past seven years and violating the Constitution by failing to pass this year's budget.
"The government is literally `eating May's grain in April,'" she said. "It is unconstitutional for the legislature to fail to perform its duty and let the government budget sit idle in the legislature."
Lu added that it was unfair to hold the Presidential Office and Cabinet responsible for the gridlock, as the legislative meltdown could be attributed to many reasons, including ideological differences and questionable legislative rules.
"I hope legislative candidates clearly spell out remedies for the problem and tell their constituents how they are going to tackle the matter," she said.
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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