Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) yesterday said the efforts by the Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration to remove Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) from the Legislative Yuan were a ploy to push for the ratification of the cross-strait service trade agreement in the legislature.
The nation has been rocked by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special Investigation Division’s (SID) allegations that Wang had lobbied former minister of justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫), High Prosecutors’ Office Head Prosecutor Chen Shou-huang (陳守煌) and High Prosecutors’ Office Prosecutor Lin Shiow-tao (林秀濤) in an attempt to take legal pressure off Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘).
If it is ratified by the Legislative Yuan, the service trade agreement, which was signed in June in Shanghai, would open 64 sub-sectors in the service industry to Chinese investment, while China will open 80 sub-sectors to Taiwanese businesses.
Aside from the media reports of Ma having called several media companies on the Wang issue — showing that the government was attempting to influence it — Pan also said he received a tip-off from local supporters.
Pan cited source as saying that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) had launched a counter-offensive by spreading rumors — particularly around veterans’ villages — that Wang lobbied for Ker and that Ma did the right thing and that if the service trade agreement did not pass, the government’s finances would become even more strained, which could affect their retirement funding.
Some have alleged that Wang had struck a deal with the opposition party to let the Ma administration have little or no administrative results to show for in order to facilitate the impeachment of Ma, Pan said.
It is clear that efforts to remove Wang are not actually a vendetta against Wang himself, but are focused on the passage of the agreement, Pan said, adding that it was appalling that the government has resorted to using pension funds to intimidate its own citizens.
The government’s strained financial situation has nothing to do with the ratification of the agreement, and everything to do with how the Ma administration has handled economic policies, Pan said.
The KMT should not confuse the effects of its mistakes for the cause, Pan said.
Pointing out that the KMT holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, Pan said it was strange that the KMT had not tried to amend the relevant legal acts over the past years if it was truly dissatisfied with how the legislature carried out its negotiations.
“Only when they are trying to remove Wang are they saying that the system is flawed, which does not make sense,” Pan said.
Pan added that whether Wang had or had not lobbied for Ker was not the president’s or the KMT’s business, adding that it was an internal disciplinary matter for the Legislative Yuan to deal with.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods