Former American Institute in Taiwan chairman Richard Bush yesterday praised President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for “trying very hard” to resolve the political gridlock over the controversial cross-strait service trade agreement.
Bush, currently director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for East Asia Policy Studies, made the remarks during a meeting with Ma at the Presidential Office.
“I read your press conference on Sunday and I thought it was quite eloquent and quite conciliatory. I hope it provides a platform for resolving the issue and I think you are trying very hard,” Bush said.
Photo: CNA
Ma has held two international press conferences — one on March 23 and another on Saturday — to clarify the controversies surrounding the trade agreement since hundreds of students stormed and occupied the Legislative Yuan on March 18 to protest the agreement.
The student activists have demanded that the Executive Yuan withdraw the trade agreement from the legislature and suspend its legislative review until a legal mechanism to supervise cross-strait agreements is established. They have also demanded the holding of a citizens’ constitutional conference with representatives from all walks of life to ensure the public’s full and active participation in major national issues.
During yesterday’s meeting, Ma said that long-term occupation of the legislature was not a viable solution to the dispute over the trade agreement.
“To solve this issue, one must have not only an enthusiastic heart, but also a calm mind,” Ma said.
Ma said he was open to dialogue with the students and people from all sectors of society because he believed the issue could only be addressed when lawmakers are allowed to get back to work and to review and vote on the agreement item-by-item.
The president also reiterated that the trade agreement could not be retracted, saying that doing so would compromise Taiwan’s international credibility, impede the development of the service industry and hinder the nation’s chance of joining regional economic groups.
“It could also lead to a further rise in unemployment, particularly among youth,” Ma said.
With regard to the students’ ongoing occupation of the legislature and their brief seizure of the Executive Yuan on March 23, Ma said such behavior would not be tolerated in any democratic nation and that the perpetrators should be dealt with according to the law.
“Although the Republic of China’s legal system is designed to respect and protect peaceful rallies and protests, those who interfere with public functions or willfully damage and forcibly occupy public properties should be subject to the law,” Ma said.
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
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
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