There may be a “higher purpose” in President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) handling of allegations of influence peddling that have been leveled against Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), and Ma would benefit from sharing it with the public if there is, a former White House official said in Taipei yesterday.
“There seems to be something deeper going,” said Stephen Yates, who served as deputy national security adviser to former US vice president Dick Cheney, referring to Ma’s condemnation on Sunday of Wang’s alleged involvement in lobbying on behalf of a fellow lawmaker in an embezzlement case.
Ma has also urged Wang to return home as soon as possible from Malaysia to explain his actions, a move Yates described as “unusual.”
Wang left Taipei on Friday for Malaysia for his second daughter’s wedding.
“I think the challenge for President Ma is to explain to the country what the higher purpose behind these tactical moves [is],” Yates said.
If Ma has a higher purpose that is supported by the public, he may be able to earn more backing at a time when his administration has been beleaguered by low approval ratings, Yates added.
Yates said he has a “strong guess” that Ma’s motivation is linked to plans for handling the legislative review of the service trade agreement signed with China in June.
Many analysts think that Wang is not keen to move the review process forward as quickly as the Ma administration would like.
Yates said that checks and balances are the hardest part of the democratic process.
Asked whether he believes Ma will be able to handle the case successfully, Yates said Ma “has no choice but to face it.”
“I think Taiwan has been through a lot,” he said. “And it will get through this too.”
Taiwan has made it through decades of democratization and now “the citizenry is relatively stable; economic development is relatively stable,” he said.
A well-known expert on Asia security, Yates is now chief executive officer of DC Asia Advisory, a Washington-based consultancy.
Wang has been accused of interfering in a legal case when he allegedly used his influence in June to stop a prosecutor from appealing a not-guilty verdict in favor of Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).
While admitting to calling then-minister of justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) in June, Wang has denied any wrongdoing.
Lawmakers are barred by law from from lobbying for people involved in an ongoing legal case.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater