■ POLITICS
Chen, Wu miss court date
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and his wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), did not show up for a hearing yesterday in which the pair were summoned as witnesses. The Taiwan High Court asked the pair to testify in a slander case that Chen filed against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅). The high court said yesterday it would summon the pair again. In February 2000, Chiu, a campaign spokesman for independent presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜), accused Wu of possessing NT$75 million (US$2.4 million) in investments and linked her fortune to a stock market speculator nicknamed “Ah Ting” (阿丁). Chen’s camp denied the charges and accused Chiu of violating the Election and Recall Law.
■ POLITICS
Premier to give report
Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) will deliver his first administrative report at the Legislative Yuan on Friday and Tuesday next week, a statement issued by the legislature said yesterday. The legislature’s Procedure Committee completed the agenda yesterday for the plenary sessions on the same days and invited Liu to deliver his report and answer questions from lawmakers. The committee also included an amendment to a law governing the behavior of legislators. Proposed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠), the measure would specify how lawmakers who hold foreign citizenship would be disciplined. If the amendment passes, violators will be removed from office and have to return all earnings received while in office.
■ DIPLOMACY
MOFA names new staff
Sun Ta-cheng (孫大成), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MOFA) Central Taiwan Office, has been named the new ambassador to Guatemala in the first wave of diplomatic personnel reshuffles under new Minister of Foreign Affairs Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊), the ministry announced yesterday. Ou served as the representative to Guatemala before being appointed head of the ministry earlier this month. Sun was a deputy division chief and then division chief in Taiwan’s representative office in the US before taking over as director of MOFA’s Department of General Affairs. Sun was Taiwan’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic and then top representative to Chile before he was appointed to head the Central Taiwan Office in January. Meanwhile, Wu Chien-kuo (吳建國), a former deputy representative to Thailand, has been named the new deputy director of the ministry’s NGO Affairs Committee, replacing Vanessa Shih (史亞平), who was appointed Government Information Office head.
■ POLITICS
Chen weighs in on secrets
Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said that whether President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) could declassify the documents relating to his controversial “state affairs fund” and listed by him as confidential was a constitutional issue. Chen issued a statement saying that he identified those documents as classified during his presidency and the courts and prosecutors have asked Ma to declassify them. However, whether the Presidential Office or prosecutors have the right to challenge the presidential authority is a dilemma, Chen said, and it is a constitutional issue whether the new president has the right to declassify documents listed as confidential by previous presidents. Chen said it would be an overt violation of the principle of separation of powers if the judiciary intervened in presidential authority.
■ SOCIETY
Man joins girlfriend in freezer
A man grieving over the death of his girlfriend climbed inside a morgue freezer to be with her and was pulled out alive half an hour later, media and an official said yesterday. The 41-year-old man was discovered on Monday when workers detected an unusually high temperature in the freezer and realized the hatch was not securely fastened. “A morgue manager opened the hatch, saw two people lying inside, felt scared enough to yell out and then even cried,” the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported. “She didn’t calm down for a long time.” The man took a drug before entering the freezer to speed what appeared to be a suicide attempt, local papers said. They said his girlfriend had died on Friday from an overdose of sleeping pills. The morgue would step up security to ensure that family and others who come by to identify bodies do not stay too long, morgue administrator Cheng Ching-yuan (鄭景源) said.
■ HISTORY
Stamps, sheet to be issued
Taiwan Post is set to issue a set of two stamps and a souvenir sheet on Friday to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Taiwan Museum. The set includes an NT$5 stamp featuring the Yellow Tiger Flag of Democratic Taiwan and a NT$25 stamp featuring a portrait of Koxinga (1368-1644), the famous Ming general who drove the Dutch out of Taiwan. The background of the Koxinga stamp features part of a map of Taiwan dating from the Emperor Kangxi’s reign during the Qing Dynasty. The souvenir sheet’s background includes the same map as well as a picture of the museum in the upper left corner and the museum’s centenary logo in the upper right corner.
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
AMENDMENT: Contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau must be reported, and failure to comply could result in a prison sentence, the proposal stated The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday voted against a proposed bill by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers that would require elected officials to seek approval before visiting China. DPP Legislator Puma Shen’s (沈伯洋) proposed amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), stipulate that contact with certain individuals in China, Hong Kong and Macau should be reported, while failure to comply would be punishable by prison sentences of up to three years, alongside a fine of NT$10 million (US$309,041). Fifty-six voted with the TPP in opposition
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai