Former premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) published an opinion piece in the Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday condemning the Executive Yuan’s dropping of charges against the Sunflower movement activists.
The Executive Yuan on Monday said that it was dropping all criminal charges against the students who stormed its compound in Taipei in 2014 during a protest against a proposed service trade agreement with China.
Jiang, who was the premier at the time, said in the opinion piece that the dropping of charges “clearly demonstrates that this incumbent government is one that has only politics, but not right and wrong, in mind.”
“The decision might not have come as a surprise with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) being sworn in, but Premier Lin Chuan (林全) grounded the decision in the belief that [the storming] was a political problem, rather a legal one ... It will be hard for a culture of rule of law to take root if the nation is led by a government that prioritizes political considerations,” he wrote.
“The Sunflower movement was one of the [nation’s] biggest social movements in recent years. When the protesters stormed into the Legislative Yuan, society was shocked, but was also to some extent sympathetic to it. However, the radical forces of the movement attacked the Executive Yuan, broke through barricades set up by police and wrecked public offices, which completely overstepped the boundaries of a democratic demonstration and violated the movement’s original call for rationality and peace,” Jiang wrote.
He said the movement’s leaders had “self-aggrandized the movement as a revolution against dictatorship,” which had further weakened the country’s democratic culture of rule of law.
“If any group can occupy the legislature and the government, intimidate the media, paralyze traffic and the general public’s daily life just to uphold their different political ideas, it is definitely not the kind of democracy that Taiwan is after,” he wrote.
“I was once asked how I could support the ‘red shirt’ army led by Shih Ming-te (施明德) [in 2006], and also support police’s eviction of the Sunflower protesters from the Executive Yuan. The answer is simple: The red shirt army anti-corruption movement from the beginning to the end followed the rules of civil rallies. Even though the number of red shirt protesters was more than double that of the Sunflower ones, the former did not storm into the Presidential Office Building,” Jiang wrote.
Lin’s dropping of criminal charges immediately after he took over showed that the DPP wishes to “pay the movement back for its contribution to the DPP’s return to power and to continue to call for the support of radical forces,” Jiang wrote.
Jiang said that it should not be the Executive Yuan’s call to drop charges, which should have been left to the court for a just judgement, adding that the “arbitrary determination of what is political and what is legal” would leave Taiwan no peace.
Asked about the opinion piece, Executive Yuan spokesperson Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) said the Executive Yuan “respects former premier Jiang’s remarks.”
New Power Party Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), who was one of the Sunflower movement’s leaders, said Jiang and former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) are the “last ones who should have any complaint,” because all the Executive Yuan has done is acknowledge the mistakes it had made.
Huang said Jiang had been involved in former prosecutor-general Huang Shih-ming’s (黃世銘) illegal leakage of confidential information to Ma during the latter’s political feud with then-legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), and approved former KMT legislator Chang Ching-chung’s (張慶忠) 30-second passage of the service trade agreement with China.
“Taiwan’s rule of law was seriously damaged by the Ma-Jiang institution’s violations of laws and abuse of power. Jiang cannot suddenly become the guardian of the rule of law after publishing this article. It is simply ironic,” Huang Kuo-chang said.
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
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
Taiwan will now have four additional national holidays after the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment today, which also made Labor Day a national holiday for all sectors. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their majority in the Legislative Yuan to pass the amendment to the Act on Implementing Memorial Days and State Holidays (紀念日及節日實施辦法), which the parties jointly proposed, in its third and final reading today. The legislature passed the bill to amend the act, which is currently enforced administratively, raising it to the legal level. The new legislation recognizes Confucius’ birthday on Sept. 28, the
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