President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday responded to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) coalition government proposal by saying the public expected a clean government rather than a coalition.
“The DPP formed a coalition government when it was in power, but it only lasted 137 days. Rather than increasing government efficiency, the coalition made the political situation worse … What people need is a clean government,” Ma said as his motorcade made a stop in New Taipei City (新北市).
Ma’s comments came days after Tsai made the proposal. She said that if elected as president, her government would adopt a form in which “the premier does not necessarily have to be from the DPP.”
Questioning the practicality of Tsai’s proposal, Ma said that the public expected the president to build a government that would prevent corruption in any form, while raising Taiwan’s international competitiveness.
“More importantly, a nation’s leader should address cross-strait issues by presenting policies that can help establish a cross-strait consensus,” he said.
Ma, seeking re-election, also stressed the importance of the integrity of the government in an article posted on his Facebook page, with accusations of corruption against former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and officials in Chen’s administration.
Ma repeated his request for Tsai to apologize on behalf of the DPP for what he called “past mistakes” in the article, entitled “Rediscover the integrity that has been lost in Taiwan.” He questioned Tsai’s integrity over recent allegations about her role in an investment case and accused her of being evasive.
“If a presidential candidate hasn’t avoided a conflict of interest, and is evasive when confronted over the issue, how can we be sure that she would possess integrity when she becomes president? How can people take such a risk?” he said.
Meanwhile, Tsai said yesterday in Changhua County that her proposal to form a “grand coalition government” if elected has been well-received by the majority of the public.
She said it was regrettable that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had mocked the proposal.
“How would the future Cabinet be formed? Everyone can sit down and communicate,” she said. “The purpose of the DPP returning to power is to allow the nation to be more united and to make the public more harmonious, with a more effective and more honest government that would match people’s expectations.”
“Why don’t you [Ma] want to see Taiwan’s political parties sit together and promote a consensus that could unify the public and stabilize domestic politics?” she asked.
The KMT should be more open-minded about accepting the idea of the proposed coalition government, she said, adding that the KMT dismissed such an idea because it had ruled Taiwan under an authoritarian government for such a long period and its attitude toward one-party politics had not changed since it returned to power in 2008.
People First Party (PFP) presidential candidate James Soong (宋楚瑜), a former KMT member, when asked about the coalition government proposal, said he would not know how to cooperate with Tsai because he has never felt they share the same opinions on major issues like cross-strait problems and the Constitution.
He touted himself as the only one among the three presidential candidates capable of forming a coalition, saying he has no political bias and is a man of sincerity.
“Most important, I know how to run a country,” he said.
He said that if elected, he would first act to maintain stability and peace in the cross-strait region before moving to handle issues of economic development.
Additional reporting by Rich Chang
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