President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is one of the nation’s “sources of chaos” and should bear the greatest responsibility for the discontent brewing among Taiwanese, said Shih Ming-te (施明德), a former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman who has severed ties with the party.
“We needed a president who exercises the powers afforded to him by the Constitution, not a president who oversteps the boundaries of what is constitutionally allowed,” Shih said in a speech yesterday at a forum hosted by the government-affiliated Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, the sixth in a series of lectures about the nation’s democratization.
The Constitution gives the president powers related to national defense, foreign affairs and cross-strait policy, while stipulating that the Executive Yuan — headed by the premier — is the highest administrative organ in government, Shih said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
However, Ma has always usurped the mandate of the premier, Shih said.
For example, it is unnecessary for Ma to sit in at meetings of the disaster response center to oversee operations whenever there is a typhoon, since he has no expertise in this field, Shih said.
Ma should instead focus on his constitutional duties as president, which include nominating the grand justices, as well as members of the Control and Examination Yuans, as “these duties would keep him busy enough,” he said.
Ma has always had a problem hiring the right people for the right jobs, Shih added.
Although his appointees in government might be experts in their respective fields, they are “boy scouts” in terms of politics and are incapable of pushing for progress, Shih said.
Shih said that people have often asked him why he has not initiated a campaign to demand Ma resign like he did in 2006 to try and oust then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
“My answer to them is: Corruption is culpable, but incapability is not. In last year’s presidential election, Ma had already proven to be an incapable president, but he was re-elected anyway. We have to respect that,” Shih said.
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,