Premier Su Tseng-chang's (蘇貞昌) unexpected resignation yesterday surprised both the pan-green and pan-blue camps.
Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday said she was unaware of Su's intentions until he announced earlier in the day that he had tendered resignation to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and that Chen had accepted it.
She also said that she did not know why Su submitted his resignation to the president.
Responsibility
Su might have believed that he had to step down to shoulder responsibility for failing to get the budget for the Executive Yuan's operations last year passed at the Legislative Yuan, Lu said, adding that she believed that Su's resignation from the premiership won't shake the DPP's solidarity or harm the party's presidential bid next year.
Stay on
Expressing his surprise at Su's resignation and the president's approval of it, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Wang Tuoh (
Another DPP caucus whip, Ker Chien-ming (
The caucus also recognized Su's wisdom in giving room for Chen to maneuver "from above" in next year's presidential election, Ker said.
DPP Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (
Low key
DPP legislators who are affiliated with former premier Frank Hsieh's (
DPP Lawmaker Tsao Lai-wang (
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said he believed that repeated changes in the premiership do not favor the nation's development.
Six premiers
"[When the new premier takes the position] there will have been six premiers in seven years. This is not only harmful to our political stability, but also harms policy continuity," he said.
Ma made the comments during his cycling campaign trip in Pingtung yesterday.
Ma added that he did not know why Su wanted to step down.
Meanwhile, other KMT officials criticized the DPP administration for frequently changing its leaders.
"[The frequent change of premiers] shows that making political arrangements and distributing power, instead of governing the country, are the biggest priorities for the DPP government," KMT spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said in a press release.
People First Party Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said that Su's resignation showed that "President Chen obviously regards the premiership as a reward for politicians" because of the frequent changes in the position in the last seven years.
Additional reporting by Loa Iok-sin and CNA
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: