President-elect Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) office yesterday urged the state-run Taiwan Post Co (台灣郵政) to postpone plans to issue a set of memorial stamps celebrating Ma's inauguration on May 20.
"The legitimacy of certain terms in the Chunghwa Post Co's design remains controversial," a press release issued by Ma's office yesterday morning said.
The postal company was known as Chunghwa Post Co until the government changed its title to Taiwan Post Co last year.
The name change drew criticism from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the pan-blue-dominated legislature is still blocking a Cabinet proposal that would legitimize the name change.
The company's plan showed four memorial stamps portraying Ma and vice president-elect Vincent Siew (
"Basically, we believe the national title and sovereignty symbol on the stamps should follow specific rules and international conventions," Ma's spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (
"In order to prevent controversy, we have decided to deal with [the design] after May 20," he said.
The news release also said the office would like to put off the postal service's plan in part because there is no urgent need to issue the memorial stamps in light of other administrative issues Ma and Siew have to deal with before they are sworn in.
When asked about the name change issue, Lo said the official title of the postal service was legally "Chunghwa Post Co."
"Before the title stipulated in the law is amended, everything should follow the law," he said.
In related developments, Lo yesterday dismissed speculation that Ma had dropped his plan to visit the US before May 20.
"We are still planning the visit. The plan has not been finalized. We will tell everyone when it is finalized," Lo said.
Lo was commenting on a Central News Agency story on Monday that quoted former American Institute in Taiwan director Douglas Paal in Washington as saying that he heard Ma had given up on his plan to visit the US by May 20, but he was not sure if this was true.
Paal was quoted as saying that it would be "very difficult" for Ma to make it to the US because the US government has its own concerns as to whether to approve Ma's plan.
"Mr Ma Ying-jeou was showing goodwill by expressing his intention to visit [the US]. The point of the visit is to repair and improve Taiwan-US relations," Lo said.
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