The Greater Tainan Political Overseer Alliance yesterday demanded that Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) apologize for “smearing” the city council with allegations of corruption, adding fuel to a spat between City Hall and the council.
Accompanying members of the alliance, councilors told a press conference that Lai was making an issue of funds earmarked for each constituency’s construction budget under “the guise of reform.”
The conflict between City Hall and the council has forced three extra sessions to resolve the impasse, so far to little result.
Photo: CNA
Commenting yesterday, Lai said now was the time for action and to work for the interests of residents of Greater Tainan.
The merger of Tainan City and Tainan County into a single municipality on Dec. 25 led councilors to suggest an increase of each councilor’s construction fund per constituency.
Lai questioned the legality of the proposed increase.
Greater Tainan Councilor Hung Yu-feng (洪玉鳳) said that if Lai meant to imply that councilors had misappropriate the funds, he should invite Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials who had used these funds to explain whether they had “filched” the money.
“If the legality of the earmarked constituency fund is ‘questionable,’ then former Tainan County commissioners Mark Chen (陳唐山) and Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智), former Tainan mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) and even Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) should be taken in by district prosecutors,” Hung said.
Greater Tainan Councilor Lee Tsung-fu (李宗富) said councilors had the right to make suggestions and that the earmarked funds were only to safeguard against potential refusals by City Hall in case of a funding shortage.
“City Hall takes care of who bids for construction, oversees it and signs the acceptance letter,” Lee said.
Greater Tainan Councilor Lee Wen-chun (李文俊) said that if Lai refused to apologize, the council would boycott extra sessions.
Greater Tainan already has a deficit of about NT$100 billion (US$3.4 billion), and its proposed budget for fiscal 2011 would only raise it further by NT$3.8 billion, Lee said.
“Balance the budget, then send it over for review,” Lee said.
COLLABORATION: As TSMC is building an advanced wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, it needs to build a comprehensive supply chain in Europe, Joseph Wu said Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster in the European country, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Friday. Wu, who led a Taiwanese delegation at the annual GLOBSEC Forum held in Prague from Friday to today, said in a news conference that Taiwan seeks to foster cooperation between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and its counterparts in Czechia. Such cooperation is expected to transform the country into one of the most important semiconductor clusters in Europe over the next three to five years, he added. As TSMC is building an advanced
A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.” After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document. The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.” “It must be a
A tropical depression in waters east of the Philippines could develop into a tropical storm as soon as today and bring rainfall as it approaches, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, while issuing heat warnings for 14 cities and counties. Weather model simulations show that there are still considerable differences in the path that the tropical depression is projected to take. It might pass through the Bashi Channel to the South China Sea or turn northeast and move toward the sea south of Japan, CWA forecaster Yeh Chih-chun (葉致均) said, adding that the uncertainty of its movement is still high,
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
RSS