The government’s delayed reaction in launching disaster relief operations after Typhoon Morakot devastated southern Taiwan has caused widespread public rage and dissatisfaction, both in Taiwan and abroad.
By yesterday at noon, about 80 percent of Web users had voted “yes” to a CNN Internationlal online public poll question: “Should Taiwan’s leader stand down over delays in aiding typhoon victims?”
Meanwhile, a Web petition to initiate a “Let’s set a date at 919 [Sept. 19] to depose Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).”
The last character in the president’s name means nine in Chinese.
A Plurker nicknamed Xdite also called on fellow users of the Internet social platform to attend the upcoming National Youth Policy Forum, which is scheduled for Aug. 30.
Ma, Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄) as well as other Cabinet ministers are expected to make appearances.
Xdite called on other Plurkers to attend the forum, which will be open to 300 people aged 18 to 35, so that they can demand that Ma step down for mishandling the typhoon disaster relief operations.
Soon after Xdite had posted the message on his board, another Plurker replied: “I am worried that if I were to attend, I would be too inclined to throw a shoe at Ma at the event.”
On another online message board, a Web user posted a satire titled “Documentation on Emperor Ma, Chapter One.”
One passage of the fictious story reads: “Though many countries wished to come to his aid, Emperor Ma refused, saying, ‘though our country is poor, it can protect itself.’”
“The people were enraged, and pleaded for foreign aid in tears. After two days, the Emperor changed his words and said: ‘Where did the rumor come from? I never refused any aid,’” it read.
Addressing the Web protests, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) said that Ma should have stepped down long ago.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Shu-lei (羅淑蕾) said that although she had reservations about the accuracy of the poll held by CNN yesterday, its result nevertheless served as a warning sign.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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