President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) inaugural speech on Sunday was vague, conflicting and cliched, addressing neither what should be done to solve domestic economic woes nor uphold Taiwan’s sovereignty, political analysts told a forum yesterday.
The president did not address what he would do to rejuvenate Taiwan’s economy, nor did he apologize for a series of ill-advised policies, such as fuel and electricity price increases and the controversy over imports of meat containing the feed-additive ractopamine, said Wu Rong-i (吳榮義), president of the Taiwan Brain Trust think tank, which organized the forum.
Wu desribed the speech as having “one no and four withouts” — meaning Ma showed no -understanding of public opinion, while he failed to apologize for poor policies, showed no self-introspection, insisted on using the “one China” framework and put forward no new ideas.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Ma misinterpreted the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution in his speech because the “outdated” Constitution should not be used to explain Taiwan’s sovereignty and the “status quo,” Taiwan Association of University Professors -president Chang Yen-hsien (張炎憲) said.
Moreover, Chang said, as the president of Taiwan, Ma’s highlighting “Zhonghua Culture (中華文化)” and “Zhonghua Minzu (中華民族)” was “completely impractical” and neglected Taiwan’s traditional culture and values.
“The emphasis on Zhonghua Minzu was just what Beijing wanted to hear because it reaffirmed the connection between Taiwan and China. It also implies that Ma favors eventual unification,” he said.
Ma’s reiteration of the “one country, two areas (一國兩區)” formula suggested “de facto unification,” mislead the international community and legitimized Beijing’s anti-secession law, which was ratified in 2005, said David Huang (黃偉峰), a researcher at Academia Sinica.
The “one country, two areas” proposal raised eyebrows earlier this year when former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) delivered it to Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) during a visit to Beijing.
“It’s clear that the international community recognizes the China in ‘one China’ as the People’s -Republic of China, not the ROC,” Huang said.
People First Party Deputy Secretary-General Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄) said Ma had turned his back on the people with his inconsistent policies, arrogance and authoritarianism.
Some of Ma’s policies seemed to be conflicting, Liu said, such as his plan to establish a free-trade area in Greater Kaohsiung to attract Chinese investment and his pledge to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an economic integration that aims to contain China, in eight years.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
RSS