Amid the latest political storm over the alleged illegal lobbying for a lawsuit involving Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to return to Taiwan immediately and explain his alleged involvement in the incident.
“[The incident] will damage the credibility of the judicial system and at the same time hurt the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) image … I hope Speaker Wang can return to Taiwan and explain the issue to the public as soon as possible,” Ma, who doubles as KMT chairman, said after casting his vote for the KMT’s Central Standing Committee election at the Taipei City Council.
Accompanied by a group of KMT Taipei City councilors, Ma said he has instructed KMT Secretary-General Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) to contact Wang and ask him to clarify the issue as soon as possible.
Photo: CNA
Wang is in Malaysia on a family vacation. According to his assistant, Wang will not return to Taiwan any time soon because he is hosting his second daughter’s wedding today.
The assistant added that Wang has already heard the news about the alleged Ker-case lobbying from his office, but decided to refrain from commenting on the case.
Wang is scheduled to return on Tuesday, the assistant added.
Meanwhile, Ma yesterday also defended his decision to accept the resignation of former Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu (曾勇夫) on Friday night over accusations that he had abused his power to stop a prosecutor from appealing Ker’s case with the Supreme Court.
“As the general public has questions about the case, Tseng can no longer carry out his duty as the justice minister under such circumstances,” Ma said.
Tseng, who had originally refused to step down, while insisting on his innocence, announced his resignation late on Friday night after meeting with Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) twice earlier in the day.
Jiang yesterday dismissed the idea that Ma had forced Tseng’s resignation and said Tseng was defending his innocence during their private meetings.
“We both agree that he, as the top official in the judicial system, should hold his own performance to higher standards,” Jiang said.
Jiang said Tseng agreed to take “political responsibility” for the allegations and that his resignation did not mean that he admitted any involvement in illegal lobbying.
“We had a peaceful and rational discussion yesterday, and he was not forced to step down,” Jiang said.
Politicians in the pan-blue camp yesterday expressed concern about the incident and urged the Ma administration to handle it carefully.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said the incident involves administrative, legislative and judicial issues, and such a constitutional matter should be addressed carefully.
Former Taipei EasyCard Corp (悠遊卡公司) chairman Sean Lien (連勝文) expressed concern about the Special Investigation Division’s (SID) eavesdropping on Ker and Wang, but refrained from commenting further on the case.
Lien’s father, former KMT chairman Lien Chan (連戰), also showed up at the Taipei City Council to cast his vote, but declined to comment on the incident.
Meanwhile, conspiracy theories have been fueling the rumor mill, with KMT Legislator Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) saying that he saw the incident as “sheer infighting” in the government’s judiciary system between Tseng and Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘), who led the SID, while others said it was an internal struggle in the Ma administration — infighting between Ma and Wang.
Wang does not have a position within the KMT, but as legislative speaker and a key figure in the party’s localization factions, he has great influence in the party.
Wang also represents the KMT’s old power bloc, along with party heavyweights including Lien Chan and former KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), and has had problematic relations with Ma in the wake of fierce competition over the KMT chairmanship in 2005.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan and staff writer
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS