Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) should apologize to the nation for his “dereliction” in supervising public safety, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday.
Regulations stipulate that the Executive Yuan should hold an interagency public safety meeting every two months, but the last one was held a year ago, KMT Culture and Communications Committee director-general Alicia Wang (王育敏) said.
Public safety should be the premier’s “top priority,” Wang said, urging Su to immediately call an interagency meeting to discuss which municipalities and counties need public safety improvements.
Photo: CNA
Regarding the personal safety of women, President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has been “seriously negligent,” Wang added.
The Ministry of the Interior has refused to pass a proposed anti-stalking and harassment bill that has been stalled in the Legislative Yuan for years, Wang said, calling on the ministry to propose a version of the bill as soon as possible.
The KMT’s comments follow the abduction and murder of a 24-year-old Malaysian woman who was a student at Chang Jung Christian University in Tainan. A 28-year-old suspect surnamed Liang (梁) has reportedly confessed to strangling the victim before dumping her body in Kaohsiung.
KMT Cultural and Communications Committee deputy director-general Huang Tzu-che (黃子哲) said the incident shows the Democratic Progressive Party administration’s lack of concern for public safety.
Huang asked how the government could expect foreign students studying in Taiwan to feel safe given the “international scandal.”
The Food Safety Board, which should hold a meeting every three months, has not held a meeting since June 3 last year, while the last interagency public safety meeting was held on Oct. 28 last year, the KMT said, citing information from the Executive Yuan’s Web site.
In September, noting that a Food Safety Board meeting had not been held in more than a year, the party had urged the Executive Yuan to convene one to discuss the potential effects of its decision to allow imports of US pork containing ractopamine from Jan. 1.
“How many more meetings should the Executive Yuan have held that were not held?” Huang asked.
Several other meetings that the Executive Yuan is required to hold — such as the National Council for Sustainable Development, the Social Welfare Promotional Committee and the Drug Prevention and Control Board — are months overdue, he said.
“Su Tseng-chang would rather scold than hold a meeting,” he said.
Yesterday, Su said that it was his decision not to hold the interagency public safety meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Executive Yuan has asked the public not to hold ‘unnecessary meetings,’” Su said. “It is leading by example.”
Instead, discussions on specific public safety issues have been held during Executive Yuan meetings, he added.
However, Huang accused Su of deceiving the public and using the pandemic as an excuse, saying that other interagency meetings have been held since the outbreak began.
If the Executive Yuan is concerned about gatherings during the pandemic, it could hold them via videoconferencing, Huang added.
Additional reporting by CNA
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS