President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday defended the government’s decision to allow industrial production to continue at the Central Taiwan Science Park’s Houli (后里) site, despite a court order to suspend the development project.
Ma said the decision was based on the principle of “legitimate expectations,” which he described as the most important foundation of countries governed by the rule of law.
“We are abiding by the law rather than playing with words,” Ma said during the Seventh National Industrial Development Conference held in Taipei.
The Taipei High Administrative Court ruled last month that all development work at park sites in Taichung County’s Houli Township and Erlin (二林) in Changhua County must be stopped until environmental impact assessments were completed and approved.
The park administration agreed to stop work on infrastructure development, but opted against shutting down companies that had already started production or were in the process of building plants at the Houli site.
Pointing to the constitutional stipulation that “environmental and ecological protection must be given equal consideration with economic and technological development,” Ma said this means legitimate interests will be weighted against each other to determine which one should take precedence.
Ma said economic development and environmental protection are equally important to Taiwan, and there are ways for them to co-exist.
For example, he said, there has been a long-running fight between environmentalists and Hualien residents over whether to proceed with the Suhua Freeway project tabled a few years ago, after it failed an environmental impact assessment.
The dispute was later resolved following the development of an alternative project to build a new expressway, Ma said.
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The Taipei Department of Health’s latest inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in local markets revealed a 25 percent failure rate, with most contraventions involving excessive pesticide residues, while two durians were also found to contain heavy metal cadmium at levels exceeding safety limits. Health Food and Drug Division Director Lin Kuan-chen (林冠蓁) yesterday said the agency routinely conducts inspections of fresh produce sold at traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail outlets and restaurants, testing for pesticide residues and other harmful substances. In its most recent inspection, conducted in May, the department randomly collected 52 samples from various locations, with testing showing
Taipei and other northern cities are to host air-raid drills from 1:30pm to 2pm tomorrow as part of urban resilience drills held alongside the Han Kuang exercises, Taiwan’s largest annual military exercises. Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan, Yilan County, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County are to hold the annual Wanan air defense exercise tomorrow, following similar drills held in central and southern Taiwan yesterday and today respectively. The Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) and Maokong Gondola are to run as usual, although stations and passenger parking lots would have an “entry only, no exit” policy once air raid sirens sound, Taipei
Taiwan is bracing for a political shake-up as a majority of directly elected lawmakers from the main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) face the prospect of early removal from office in an unprecedented wave of recall votes slated for July 26 and Aug. 23. The outcome of the public votes targeting 26 KMT lawmakers in the next two months — and potentially five more at later dates — could upend the power structure in the legislature, where the KMT and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) currently hold a combined majority. After denying direct involvement in the recall campaigns for months, the
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