President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said he had asked government agencies to make the economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA) negotiation process as transparent as possible to ease public concern over the pact.
Ma said that as official negotiations are scheduled to begin sometime this month, he made the request to make as much information as possible available as long as this does not hamper the progress of negotiations. The administration intends to sign the pact with Beijing in May.
Government agencies must explain the pact not only to businesses benefiting from an ECFA, but also to those who will be hard-hit and propose remedies for any problems, he said.
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Ma said that although the government began promoting the proposed accord last year, the public had not obtained sufficient information about it and therefore had some “misunderstandings.”
“If we use this approach to keep pushing, we can reduce doubts among the people,” he said. “I hope this will become part of the training program of civil servants so they can do a good job promoting government policies before we officially launch them.”
Ma made the remarks while addressing a tea party to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Examination Yuan yesterday morning.
Others in attendance included Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), Examination Yuan President John Kuan (關中) and former Examination Yuan presidents Yao Chia-wen (姚嘉文), Hsu Shui-teh (許水德) and Chiu Chuang-huan (邱創煥).
Ma said recently that some government polices had not won the support of the public because most people did not understand them well enough.
“There must be reforms that are so concrete and grand that the people can feel it,” he said.
Using the example of award-winning Taiwanese film No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti (不能沒有你), Ma encouraged civil servants to refrain from clashing with people simply because certain laws and regulations were outdated.
Civil servants could do their best to create some leeway within the realms of the law and minimize possible damage, he said.
“Civil servants might not be able to do their job perfectly, but they can compare their feelings with others,” he said. “Some people might still be unsatisfied, but they might find it acceptable.”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift