Groups yesterday lambasted the likely lack of substantial personnel and policy changes in the Cabinet reorganization following the rout of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the nine-in-one elections on Saturday last week.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Wednesday named Vice Premier Mao Chih-kuo (毛治國) to replace Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺), who resigned in the wake of the KMT’s abysmal showing in the polls, with sources saying that the Ma administration would carry out a limited reorganization.
Chiayi Mayor Huang Min-hui (黃敏惠) was rumored to have been selected as vice premier yesterday.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
Representatives of civic groups yesterday joined a bipartisan slate of legislators to condemn the Ma administration’s response to public dissatisfaction with its governance.
“This time, the Cabinet reshuffling has degenerated into a formality,” Economic Democracy Union convener Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said, citing media outlets reporting that most ministers are not to be replaced and that the new Cabinet will continue to push Ma’s controversial cross-strait agenda.
He compared the administration’s ministers and policies to a pot of traditional Chinese medicine, saying that only the “lid” of the pot — Jiang — has been removed.
“If Ma has truly heard the public’s voice, he needs to truly review his controversial cross-strait trade and economic policies, as well as the responsible officials,” Lai said.
The group called on the government to review the foundation of its cross-strait policy, particularly by putting forward a “truly rigorous” bill to increase legislative oversight of cross-strait deals, adding that the current proposal merely enshrines the administration’s extant practices into law without increasing legislative oversight.
The group also called on the administration to pull its draft plan to establish free economic pilot zones and to cease moves to “smuggle” elements of the cross-strait service trade pact into action through executive orders without legislative approval.
National Development Council Minister Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔), Minister of Economic Affairs Woody Duh (杜紫軍), Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) and Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Lin Join-sane (林中森) should all be replaced, due to their roles in drafting cross-strait policies, the group said, also naming several other officials.
Ma defended his decision to name Mao, saying the move would ensure a “seamless transition.”
Mao told reporters earlier yesterday that it would take him about two days to ready his Cabinet.
Central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南), 75, recently again turned down an invitation to serve as premier, Ma said, adding that he had invited Perng to form a Cabinet more than once.
Perng wrote a letter to KMT legislators who voiced hopes that he would head the next Cabinet in which he said he had refused when Ma asked on Wednesday.
Saying that in 2011 he asserted that the position of central bank governor would be his last in the government, Perng said that he had always believed a person should remain true to their principles.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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