In spite of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) perceived readiness for the elections in the nation’s western coast, DPP candidate Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) has described the Yunlin County commissioner’s race as undoubtedly the most heatedly contested of all the Nov. 29 polls.
In a recent interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), Lee said the intensity of the contest was primarily due to the Yunlin seat being critical to preserving the influence wielded in the county by a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) faction headed by former Yunlin commissioner Chang Jung-wei (張榮味).
Lee’s KMT rival in the race is Chang Li-shan (張麗善), the sister of Chang Jung-wei.
Lee is pushing a “Brighter Yunlin” with a “clean [county] government” as the baseline policies of his campaign, with billboards hung across the county proclaiming slogans such as: “No ‘black gold’” — a reference to a graft case involving Chang Jung-wei, who was forced to step down as commissioner after he was indicted for corruption in 2005.
The “Brighter Yunlin” policy is aimed at having the county government develop ecologically friendly resources and “green” industry that can coexist harmoniously with the environment, Lee said.
In terms of government staff, Lee said he would create a clean administration, which would make the interests of the public, agriculture industry and environment of Yunlin equal and help all parties stand together to strengthen the county.
Turning to agriculture, Lee said it is Yunlin’s principal industry, earning the county NT$60 billion (US$1.9 billion) in revenue last year.
Lee said he planned to uphold the policy of making Yunlin the nation’s “agriculture capital,” as implemented by Yunlin County Commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) of the DPP, adding that he hopes to make Yunlin Taiwan’s most important agricultural production base.
On county finances, Lee said he hoped the central government would speedily pass the amendment on laws allowing local governments to incur more debt, adding that he hoped pending amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) would also be passed to make distribution of resources more logical.
However, Lee said that these issues were extremely convoluted, necessitating debate over decades and were ultimately not in the hands of local governments.
Yet he maintained that regardless of how financial distributions issues are resolved, Yunlin still has resources available.
On education, Lee proposed making school textbooks free and providing free milk to elementary school students to help them have a balanced diet.
That policy proposal clashes with Chang Li-shan’s policy initiative, which would make elementary school lunches free.
According to Lee, his education and health plans would cost just NT$10 million annually, adding that if the county government’s finances are well husbanded, that would be an affordable amount.
Lee said that by contrast, Chang Li-shan’s policy of free lunches would cost more than NT$20 million a year and would be classified as a social welfare policy, which regulations stipulate would require identifying the more financially capable families to ensure they do not receive the same benefits.
“The county government should not waste its money, and its limited resources must be used with greater efficiency and placed where needed,” Lee said.
He added that under his governance, the county government would not request the controversial subsidy funds from Formosa Plastic Group’s naphtha cracker on an individual basis.
Local governments should not have to rely on the kindness of businesses, Lee said, adding that the central government should mandate corporate subsidies for the local population, as only then would local governments have more say in the matter, making corporate subsidy programs more fair and logical.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS