The Cabinet will remain under pressure to tackle unemployment and many other issues after the ruling party took 12 of the 17 mayor and county commissioner seats up for grabs in Saturday’s local elections, political analysts said yesterday.
Although the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) secured a majority in the elections, it lost the county commissioner seat in Yilan County to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and that of Hualien County to independent Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁), who was expelled by the KMT for insisting in vying for the seat against party wishes.
The KMT won 47.88 percent of the votes cast, lower than the 50.96 percent it won in the last local government elections in 2005. The DPP won four seats, one more than it won in the elections four years ago. It also obtained 45.32 percent of the vote, up from 38 percent in the previous election.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is also KMT chairman, said at a post-election press conference on Saturday that the outcome of the elections was not “ideal” for his administration and that the party’s decline in local government seats and vote share was a “warning” that the KMT would have to address.
Political analysts said the Ma administration is expected to face increasing challenges in boosting employment and reviving the economy, as well as in carrying out post-Typhoon Morakot reconstruction work and dealing with a looming water shortage in the south.
Ma said on Nov. 15 at a ground-breaking ceremony for a permanent housing park in Kaohsiung County to accommodate typhoon victims that the first batch of 600 houses was scheduled for completion at the end of next month.
The Cabinet therefore finds itself racing against time to complete the construction project to fulfill Ma’s promise, analysts said.
With the water stored in reservoirs in southern Taiwan and the Gaoping River (高屏溪) lower than past annual averages, Vice Premier Eric Chu (朱立倫) convened an inter-ministerial meeting on Wednesday to review water supplies around the country and develop response measures.
A consensus was reached during the meeting that before the next flood season — between May and November — the government should ensure that water for public consumption and industrial use in Taiwan is not seriously affected.
The Water Resources Agency said at the meeting that measures to stop irrigation and planting in some areas in the south might be unavoidable, with the affected areas expected to be announced later this month.
Another major challenge for the government will be addressing unemployment.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) has said that as unemployment is an indicator of a lagging economy, the government was treating boosting employment as one of its top priorities.
The Cabinet is trying to come up with employment promotion measures, with the aim of creating 99,000 jobs.
Short-term employment promotion measures for last year and this year will end at the end of this month, with about 45,000 temporary workers benefiting from the program becoming unemployed.
The other important task for the government will be continuing its preventive measures against swine flu. By Lunar New Year, the Department of Health will have given 120 million doses of free vaccine, analysts said.
Another test will be the security measures it puts in place for Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), who will visit Taiwan for the next round of Cross-Strait talks in Taichung City later this month, they said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
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