Referendums to take place on Aug. 28 are due to the government’s “lack of communication,” Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said yesterday, accusing the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of only being interested in “self-promotion” as the nation faces a water shortage.
At a weekly meeting of the KMT’s Central Standing Committee in Taipei, Chiang said that communicating major policies to the public is the government’s duty.
Each referendum — whether the two initiated by the KMT or the one on protecting algal reefs off the coast of Taoyuan and the one on activating the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant — was a “final solution” to the government’s lack of communication and a public backlash triggered by its policies, Chiang said.
The KMT repeatedly urged the government to communicate its policies, but the government only began to do so after referendums were proposed, Chiang said.
Without an agency dedicated to explaining the government’s policies, Chiang said he was worried that disagreements would worsen and the referendums would turn into a “political showdown.”
The water shortage persists and is the public’s most immediate concern, he said, adding that restrictions on residential water supplies in parts of Taichung and Miaoli County, which are set to begin next week, have led to a public outcry.
While people should cooperate with water conservation efforts, Taiwan Water Corp statistics showed that as of last year, the nation had a water leakage rate of about 13.9 percent and was wasting 440 million tonnes of tap water per year, he said.
“There is still a lot of work to be done in terms of lowering leakage rates and conserving water resources in the nation,” he added.
Given the shortage, the DPP should pay attention to the inconvenience that people are experiencing, and not just think about promoting itself, he said.
The government should not forget the key role that water plays in disease prevention when restricting residential supplies, Chiang said, urging water resource and disease prevention agencies to step up cooperation to ensure that people are conserving while continuing to practice disease prevention.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
TAIWAN ADVOCATES: The resolution, which called for the recognition of Taiwan as a country and normalized relations, was supported by 22 Republican representatives Two US representatives on Thursday reintroduced a resolution calling for the US to end its “one China” policy, resume formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and negotiate a bilateral Taiwan-US free trade agreement. Republican US representatives Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th District were backed by 22 Republican members of the US House of Representatives. The two congressmen first introduced the resolution together in 2021. The resolution called on US President Donald Trump to “abandon the antiquated ‘one China’ policy in favor of a policy that recognizes the objective reality that Taiwan is an independent country, not
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)