Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) announced yesterday that he would continue to serve as premier "for political stability" and that most of his Cabinet members would also stay on, after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) rejected his resignation.
Chang resigned from the position on Thursday following a tradition set by previous premiers following the election of a new legislature.
However, with only three months left of his presidential term, Chen decided to reject Chang's resignation in order to avoid any more political upheaval, the Central News Agency reported.
Chang accepted Chen's decision and said that most of his team would stay as well.
"My Cabinet team knows my leadership style well," Chang said when approached for comment outside his residence. "I think they will stay on with me."
As for the vacancies left by former Cabinet members who were elected to the legislature, "those vacancies will be filled with lawmakers who failed in their re-election bids," Chang said.
Meanwhile, Chang confirmed that Government Information Office Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) and Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) would stay on.
Shieh and Tu resigned before the Cabinet did so en masse, after Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) and several other Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) members said that the two, along with Ministry of Education chief secretary Chuang Kuo-jung (莊國榮), were partly responsible for the party's defeat in the legislative elections because of their "controversial" behavior.
In related news, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
"Rejecting the [Cabinet's] resignation is more acceptable. It would be wrong for the president to accept [Chang's] resignation and then appoint a new premier only months before the presidential election," Wang said yesterday outside the Central Election Commission, where he was accompanying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) as he registered his candidacy.
Constitutional convention stipulates that the Cabinet resign when a new legislature is elected and gives the president the power to choose a new premier without requiring the consent of the new legislature.
Establishing a new constitutional convention, as Chen has suggested, would eliminate the problem of a Cabinet forming twice in the space of three months, once when the new legislature is sworn in on Feb. 1 and again when the new president is inaugurated on May 20.
Rejecting the resignation and making the Cabinet a "caretaker Cabinet" presenting policies and bills through cross-party negotiations was more reasonable, Wang said.
Wang said the Constitution did not require the premier to resign after a new legislature was elected.
Meanwhile, two academics yesterday criticized the DPP caucus' move to seek a constitutional interpretation on the new "single district, two-vote" electoral voting system.
At a forum in Taipei, National Taiwan University political science professor Chang Lin-cheng (張麟徵) said it was "strange" for the caucus to pursue the interpretation, adding that such a move would give the public a negative impression as the new system had been "co-authored" by the DPP and the KMT.
"The DPP should have been able to foresee the [legislative elections] result [under the new system]," she said, adding that the new system should not be reviewed until it had been used at least twice.
"Is it reasonable for those who lose the game to seek to change the rules of the competition?" she asked.
Chang made the comments after the DPP caucus on Friday began a signature drive to seek a constitutional interpretation on the grounds that the new system was unfair because of the large variations in the sizes of the populations in the different constituencies.
The caucus is expected to hold a meeting today to promote the signature drive.
George Tsai (
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Snow fell on Yushan (Jade Mountain, 玉山) yesterday morning as a continental cold air mass sent temperatures below freezing on Taiwan’s tallest peak, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Snowflakes were seen on Yushan’s north peak from 6:28am to 6:38am, but they did not fully cover the ground and no accumulation was recorded, the CWA said. As of 7:42am, the lowest temperature recorded across Taiwan was minus-5.5°C at Yushan’s Fengkou observatory and minus-4.7°C at the Yushan observatory, CWA data showed. On Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County, a low of 1.3°C was recorded at 6:39pm, when ice pellets fell at Songsyue Lodge (松雪樓), a
RSS