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Ma misinterpreted the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution in his speech because the “outdated” Constitution should not be used to explain Taiwan’s sovereignty and the “status quo,” Taiwan Association of University Professors -president Chang Yen-hsien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.
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
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A total lunar eclipse, an astronomical event often referred to as a “blood moon,” would be visible to sky watchers in Taiwan starting just before midnight on Sunday night, the Taipei Astronomical Museum said. The phenomenon is also called “blood moon” due to the reddish-orange hue it takes on as the Earth passes directly between the sun and the moon, completely blocking direct sunlight from reaching the lunar surface. The only light is refracted by the Earth’s atmosphere, and its red wavelengths are bent toward the moon, illuminating it in a dramatic crimson light. Describing the event as the most important astronomical phenomenon
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