Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday raised a volley of questions about Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Hau Lung-bin's (郝龍斌) integrity, saying that Hau's inability to answer the questions proved his incompetence to run the local government.
DPP Legislator Wang Shih-cheng (王世堅) said that Hau had rigged a public bid for an incinerator-building project in 2002 when he was head of the Environment Protection Administration (EPA).
"The EPA should have rejected Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd's bid as the government had vowed not to do business with the firm for a year because of a dispute [between Mitsubishi and Chinese Petroleum Co]," Wang said.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
Meanwhile, DPP legislators Hsu Huo-yun (
Hau's wife had said the day before that her family lived at 317 Fulin Road -- next to her father-in-law Hau Pei-tsun's (
Hau Lung-bin's lawyer Su Ying-kuei (蘇盈貴) argued yesterday that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries had won the incinerator bid fairly, and that Hau had not favored the contractor.
Su said the original contractor, Da Ying Co, had terminated its contract with the EPA in 2000 because of financial difficulties. The next three bids in 2001 had failed as only one company had participated, Su said.
Although Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was one of the companies boycotted for one year by the Public Construction Committee, Su said that Hau had cited Article 103 of the Government Procurement Law (政府採購法) and requested the committee allow the company to participate in the fourth bid because of the urgency of the project.
The committee later agreed to allow the company to participate, and Mitsubishi won with a bid of NT$2.2 billion (US$66 million), which had saved the government about NT$50 million, Su said.
Hau, meanwhile, urged DPP Taipei mayoral candidate Frank Hsieh (
Hsieh in turn denied that he had ever asked Taiwan Solidarity Union Taipei mayoral candidate Clara Chou (
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
RSS