Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) should step down if he does not guarantee that the service trade agreement with China will not be validated until the legislature conducts a de facto review of it, civic groups said yesterday as they rallied outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei yesterday to protest the signing of the pact.
“The premier should publicly promise that he will not validate the pact until the Legislative Yuan reviews and approves it. If he does not promise this, or unilaterally validates the agreement, we call on lawmakers to dissolve the Cabinet and boycott it by all means possible,” Cross-Strait Agreements Watch convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said.
“This is an agreement that will have a huge impact on workers and yet the government not only declined to allow the public to participate in the decisionmaking process prior to the pact’s signing, it is now not allowing public involvement after the signing,” Lai said.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The service agreement was signed by the Straits Exchange Foundation and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits on Friday last week.
Under the pact, Chinese capital and personnel will be allowed to enter some industries in Taiwan’s service sector and Taiwan will be granted to access to some Chinese industries.
The development has caused concern among many Taiwanese, who worry that Chinese capital may marginalize Taiwanese capital and that Chinese workers will take job opportunities from their local counterparts.
Though the content of the agreement was kept hidden from the public and the Legislative Yuan, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-majority legislature is likely to approve it without going through the details.
Taiwan Labour Front secretary-general Son Yu-lian (孫友聯) said that neither the government nor the service industry are fully prepared to meet the new challenges that they will face after the pact is implemented.
“The government should not validate the service trade pact without being fully prepared for its effects,” Son said. “We would especially like to protest the government’s plan to allow Chinese workers into Taiwan in such a rash and underprepared manner.”
Taiwan Rural Front researcher Hsu Po-jen (許博任) said that almost everyone would be affected by the new deal and urged the public to pay more attention to it.
“Running water, electricity, gas, education — everything that we thought would be protected by the government may become corporate-controlled,” Hsu said.
“Thinking beyond China, with the KMT and President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) support for free trade and economic liberalization, not only Chinese capital, but also US, South Korean, or Japanese capital could be in control of our lives,” Hsu added.
“We have to shout our opposition to any kind of free trade that favors multinational corporations,” he added.
After Executive Yuan official Chang Hung-chun (張洪均) took the petition from the protesters — without making any comments — the demonstrators moved to the Legislative Yuan to meet with the Democratic Progressive Party, People First Party and Taiwan Solidarity caucuses to discuss further action in the legislature against the agreement.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
RSS