Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday voiced support for a plan to appeal against a Taipei High Administrative Court ruling that suspended two Central Taiwan Science Park expansion projects.
Wu again cast doubt on the professionalism of the Taipei High Administrative Court in the case, saying that cases such as these needed to be handled by judges who had a high level of knowledge in a related field of expertise.
“There has never been any case in the past in which administrative courts have ruled on a case related to [the thoroughness of] an environmental impact assessment [on a development project,]” Wu said. “If there is a medical [controversy] in the future, will the court also rule how deep the surgical cut should go [during an operation] and how many stitches should be made?”
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
Whether it was appropriate for administrative courts to judge an environmental impact assessment should be discussed, he said.
The court on Friday ordered the park to suspend all expansion activities in Cising (七星) in Houli Township (后里), Taichung County, as well as in Erlin (二林), Changhua County, because the environmental impact studies were incomplete.
Late last night, Wu said in a press statement that the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and the National Science Council had decided to appeal the case to the Supreme Administrative Court.
National Science Council Minister Lee Lou-chuang (李羅權) said the injunction handed down by the court was controversial and should be challenged.
He said the council would ask the EPA to conduct another environmental impact assessment within a month for the Houli expansion, as required by law.
If everything goes well, Lee said, the assessment would be completed by October and hopefully construction at Houli would resume.
The government would try its utmost to prevent businesses from suffering losses, Wu said yesterday.
“It is necessary to respect the court’s judgment, but the most important issue is to keep government policies consistent and coherent and to avoid investor losses,” he said.
Corporations decided to invest in the park because they had confidence in the government, therefore the government was obliged to protect their interests, he said.
“This is a case of concern for the nation’s economic development, investor confidence in Taiwan’s investment environment and environmental protection,” Wu said.
Wu said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politicians should sympathize with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government instead of making sarcastic remarks about the court ruling.
The opposition should remember that the two expansion projects, as well as the Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology plant, were all approved under the former DPP administration, he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS