The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday lashed out at Minister of Transportation and Communications Yeh Kuang-shih (葉匡時) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for saying that the party should be held responsible for the bankruptcy of Taiwan High Speed Rail Co (THSRC).
With THSRC suffering a financial crisis, the ministry proposed to extend by 40 years the build-operate-transfer agreement the government signed with the company to allow corporate investors to benefit from the rail operator and encourage them to continue to invest.
However, Yeh’s proposal was criticized as benefiting corporations at the expense of taxpayers and failed a legislative review, with even KMT lawmakers objecting to the plan.
Following the legislature’s rejection of his financial reconstruction plan, Yeh announced that he would resign as minister.
His resignation is pending the approval of Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國), with Mao and President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) trying to persuade him to stay.
Meanwhile, the DPP urged the ministry to accept responsibility for THSRC’s expected bankruptcy.
“The governing party should be responsible for its policies rather than blaming the opposition party,” DPP spokesperson Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) told a news conference yesterday.
“The financial reconstruction plan proposed by the ministry was not carefully drafted, and is far from transparent, therefore it was rightly questioned and rejected even by lawmakers from the KMT,” Cheng said.
While the construction of the high-speed rail system was completed under a DPP administration, the contracts were signed during the previous KMT administration and Mao was deputy minister of transportation and communications at the time, Cheng said.
The ministry “should not threaten the public with the company’s potential bankruptcy,” he said, adding that “bankruptcy is not the only option, the ministry should try its best to come up with a solution, instead of blaming others.”
The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) also panned Yeh’s handling of the company’s financial crisis.
“The ministry should not threaten people with the likelihood that the company will soon go broke”, TSU caucus whip Lai Chen-chang (賴振昌) said.
Obviously, Yeh is trying to act on behalf of corporate investors who want to use more taxpayers’ money, Lai said.
TSU Legislator Chou Ni-an (周倪安) said that since New Taipei Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) has promised to push for reforms after he is sworn in as KMT chairman, “why not just make up the financial gap with the KMT’s illegally earned party assets?”
Chu is the only candidate for the KMT chairperson position.
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