Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) yesterday brushed aside concerns voiced by protesters about the cross-strait service trade agreement as he demanded that Cabinet members push ahead with the pact, saying it will bring the nation more advantages than disadvantages.
“Not only do its advantages outweigh the disadvantages, it is also crucial to the future of our economic development, which is what a responsible person must bravely do,” Jiang said in his address at the weekly Cabinet meeting as the protests that began on Tuesday outside and inside the Legislative Yuan continued.
Jiang made three demands of Cabinet members.
Photo: David Chang, EPA
The “first and foremost priority for” each government agency is to have the trade pact endorsed by the legislature before its current session ends in June, he said.
He urged the necessary agencies to communicate more effectively with the public to boost the support base for the trade pact to beyond the current 60 percent.
He asked the National Police Agency to take the appropriate measures necessary to assist the Legislative Yuan in a rapid resumption of order in the complex, without provoking serious clashes with protesters or inconveniencing lawmakers.
Given the controversy over the trade pact, each government agency must remain steadfast, showing the public how the government is continuing to work on policies to benefit the nation and its people, and show them the direction the nation is taking, Jiang said.
The concerns voiced by the protesters that the negotiations leading to the trade pact were opaque and the pact’s terms of trade would hurt the interests of Taiwan were “unnecessary,” he said.
The protesters’ perceptions of the pact were based on “groundless rumors” and “defamation,” Jiang said, blaming “certain media” for their “incorrect” coverage of how the pact would affect the country.
The government has completed all the preparations to liberalize the sectors covered under the pact since it was signed in June last year, Jiang said.
The policies and measures needed to assist local industries, such as laundries, hair salons, beauty centers and Chinese medicine dealers in upgrading their quality so they can become more competitive are ready for implementation, he said.
After months of effort, the associations of those industries that might suffer adverse effects after the pact is implemented have gradually come around to support the agreement, Jiang said.
The “certain political and social groups” behind the protesters should not try to use the situation for their own political gains because it would only damage the nation’s democratic system.
Meanwhile, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said the protesters’ occupation of the legislature’s chamber was apparently “instigated” by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and other “ill-intentioned people” and that the KMT would never give in to their ultimatum.
“Democratic politics means that people make rational appeals by legal means. Democracy without the rule of law is nothing but chaos,” Lin said.
The presence of several DPP lawmakers inside and outside the legislature and the repeated calls by senior members of the party for the public to join the siege of the Legislative Yuan proved that the DPP was responsible for inciting the students to seize the chamber.
“The student occupation is tantamount to trampling on [the dignity of] the legislature and the people of Taiwan,” Lin said.
The DPP should not sacrifice the public’s general interest for its own self-interests, he said.
The protesters have issued an ultimatum, demanding that President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration respond to their demands by noon today.
The demands include the suspension of all interaction with China until the legislature passes a law to monitor cross-strait agreements and the reversal of KMT Legislator Chang Ching-chung’s (張慶忠) decision on Monday during the service trade pact review meeting to send the agreement directly to a second reading without a clause-by-clause review.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS