The new Cabinet, led by Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), and new Presidential Office appointments were sworn into office yesterday morning.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) presided over the swearing-in ceremony at the Presidential Office, the office said in a statement.
It marked the conclusion of a reshuffle of the Cabinet and the Presidential Office following the resignation of former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and his Cabinet on Monday.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Also attending the ceremony were Vice President William Lai (賴清德) and National Security Council Secretary-General Wellington Koo (顧立雄), as well as the heads of the Judicial Yuan, Control Yuan and Examination Yuan, the statement said.
During a separate ceremony yesterday at the Executive Yuan marking the handover of power from the outgoing Cabinet to the newly appointed one, Chen said he and his Cabinet would spare no effort in their tenure until the end of Tsai’s second term in May next year.
Chen, who served as vice president during Tsai’s first term from 2016 to 2020, is expected to lead his Cabinet to resign en masse even if the Democratic Progressive Party wins the presidential election next year and stays in power.
Photo: CNA
One of his Cabinet’s priorities is to further loosen COVID-19 disease prevention protocols with the aim of “bringing people’s lives back to normal,” Chen said.
At the same time, the Cabinet will be dedicated to helping companies and individuals that have been economically affected by the pandemic over the past three years, he said.
In particular, the government is planning to help boost small and medium-sized enterprises, and to improve the infrastructure of agricultural and fishing areas, he said.
The Cabinet will seek to “lead Taiwan through various challenges” against the backdrop of a volatile global economy and inflation while turning Taiwan into a more resilient and competitive nation for the decades to come, he said.
The Cabinet will roll out social welfare measures to “ease the financial burden of the general public” and focus on fighting major crimes, such as illegal drugs, organized crime and fraud, he said.
Meanwhile, Su, 75, said that although he was leaving public office, he would be ready to serve “whenever the country needs [me].”
Su, the longest-serving premier since direct presidential elections began in Taiwan in 1996, gave his blessings to Chen and his Cabinet, many of whom were holdovers from the previous Cabinet.
Lai said he had the utmost confidence that Chen would fulfill all the tasks entrusted by Tsai in the next 16 months.
The coming year is key as Taiwan seeks to fully recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Lai said, adding that he expected Chen’s Cabinet to do their best to promote post-pandemic economic recovery and other government policies.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas