The public should join a protest on Sunday to demand that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) hold a national affairs conference to resolve the various crises facing the nation, pro-independence groups said yesterday.
The organizations, including the Taiwan National Alliance, Taiwan Solidarity Union, the Taiwan Association of University Professors and the Taipei Shue-tan-tan Sister Alliance, issued the call at a press conference in Taipei.
The Ma administration is directionless, putting the nation in peril as the economy plummets from leading the four “Asian Tigers” to being in last place and doing worse economically than the Philippines, Taiwan Friends Association president Huang Kun-hu (黃崑虎) said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
“It is time to make a stand, to let the government know that the Taiwanese people are angry,” Huang said.
While Democratic Progressive Party Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) last week said his party would call off the rally if Ma met the party’s three demands — reshuffling the Cabinet, rejecting the controversial Next Media Group deal and holding a national affairs conference — the pro-independence groups said that the rally should not be used to vent political discontent or as a bargaining chip against the government.
However, they suggested that three appeals be added to the list for Sunday: to impeach the president, abolish the preferential interest rate on the savings of military personnel, civil servants and teachers, and allow a paper to be founded by the public.
Meanwhile, Su visited the Taipei Municipal Drivers’ Trade Union to seek the support of its leaders for Sunday’s protest.
The more people take to the streets, the more pressure will be brought to bear on the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to adjust its policies, Su said.
Only by demonstrating their power would people have their opinions heard by the government, Su said, citing as an example the decision by KMT legislators on Wednesday to support a DPP proposal to revise three laws related to radio and TV broadcasting.
At a news conference in Taipei earlier in the day, DPP spokesman Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said the KMT administration, which had promised in 2008 to bring a bright future to the nation, was now rotten from top to bottom.
Lin also urged the public to join the protest to show their dissatisfaction with the KMT government by joining the rally, adding that the theme of the protest is the public “want a livelihood, want reforms, want democracy.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,