The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday urged President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to steer the nation back in the right direction — the anniversary of first and Ma’s second-term inaugurations — but said that now is not the right time to impeach him.
“While we think Ma deserves to be recalled, now is not the right time to do so because the country is embroiled in a diplomatic row with the Philippines,” DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told a press conference, referring to Taipei’s engagement with Manila over the shooting of Taiwanese fisherman Hung Shih-cheng (洪石成) by Philippine Coast Guard personnel on May 9.
The DPP said that the diplomatic tussle with the Philippines was why it was not supporting the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) in the latter’s proposal to impeach the president, as it did last year.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Reviewing Ma’s performance over the past five years, the DPP said the nation has been a chaos under his rule and submitted an appeal listing eight issues Ma should tackle in the remaining three years of his term.
The party urged Ma to halt the construction of the controversial Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮) and hold a national referendum on the plant.
The president should also conduct a comprehensive review of Taiwan’s economic situation and structure before putting forward a long-term recovery plan to improve national competitiveness, Su said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
The DPP also called for the establishment of a 12-year compulsory education system, the formulation of a sustainable and fair pension system and the implementation of a 10-year long-term care program — a national program initiated by the former DPP administration that was shelved after Ma took office — to look after the needs of the nation’s aging population.
It was also imperative to review the nation’s administrative partitioning and national planning since the number of special municipalities would increase to six next year from the original two in 2010, meaning that new issues in areas such as local finances would likely emerge, Su said.
Finally, the DPP demanded that Ma fight corruption, reform the judicial system and bolster defense and foreign policy.
Former DPP chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said on her Facebook page yesterday that Ma’s seemingly ambitious reform efforts were “fast-food” reforms that only touch upon the surface of a problem without going into the core of the matter.
Tsai urged Ma to listen to the public as he completes his term and tackle Taiwan’s structural challenges from a long-term perspective.
Meanwhile, the TSU told protesters at a rally in front of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei that it would submit a legislative proposal to recall the president for his poor governance during the past five years.
TSU Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝) said the TSU launched a recall petition a year ago that has collected about 830,000 signatures.
“With only three legislators, the TSU caucus is small, but it is confident it will winn support from the public and lawmakers from other parties,” Huang told hundreds of protesters amid the honking of car horns by taxi drivers to show their support of the rally.
A DPP-TSU joint motion to impeach Ma was voted off the agenda by the legislature’s Procedure Committee in May last year, five days before the end of Ma’s first term.
The Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) stipulates that a recall proposal can only be made with the support of at least one-quarter of the total members of the legislature and can only pass if it gets the approval of at least two-thirds of all lawmakers.
The act further states that a president or vice president who has not been in their position for a full year may not be recalled.
The TSU listed 10 reasons for launching a new recall campaign, including Ma’s failure to deliver on his campaign pledges, his pro-China position, poor economic and financial performance, failure to fight corruption and oppression of media freedom under his tenure, among others.
TSU Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) said the party has also launched an online petition and hoped to collect 1 million signatures by next month.
In related news, DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said the government must hold its officials — in particular Minister of Finance Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) — responsible for the capital gains tax on securities transactions accountable for their the hasty and flawed implementation of the policy.
The Ma administration and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ignored the DPP’s proposal and insisted on adopting the KMT’s “inferior” initiative, which introduced a 8,500-point threshold on the TAIEX for the tax to be implemented, Lin said.
“Less than five months after the tax proposal was passed, the administration is now considering revising the regulations again. Someone has to be held accountable for this mess,” Lin said.
Separately, DPP members said that Ma had fallen asleep during a press conference at the Central Disaster Emergency Operation Center to oversee state flood-prevention efforts, adding that the nap had been caught on film.
GEARING UP: An invasion would be difficult and would strain China’s forces, but it has conducted large-scale training supporting an invasion scenario, the report said China increased its military pressure on Taiwan last year and took other steps in preparation for a potential invasion, an annual report published by the US Department of Defense on Wednesday showed. “Throughout 2023, Beijing continued to erode longstanding norms in and around Taiwan by employing a range of pressure tactics against Taiwan,” the report said, which is titled “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2024.” The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “is preparing for a contingency to unify Taiwan with the PRC by force, if perceived as necessary by Beijing, while simultaneously deterring, delaying or denying
‘LAGGING BEHIND’: The NATO secretary-general called on democratic allies to be ‘clear-eyed’ about Beijing’s military buildup, urging them to boost military spending NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte mentioning China’s bullying of Taiwan and its ambition to reshape the global order has significance during a time when authoritarian states are continuously increasing their aggression, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. In a speech at the Carnegie Europe think tank in Brussels on Thursday, Rutte said Beijing is bullying Taiwan and would start to “nibble” at Taiwan if Russia benefits from a post-invasion peace deal with Ukraine. He called on democratic allies to boost defense investments and also urged NATO members to increase defense spending in the face of growing military threats from Russia
PEACEFUL RESOLUTION: A statement issued following a meeting between Australia and Britain reiterated support for Taiwan and opposition to change in the Taiwan Strait Canada should support the peaceful resolution of Taiwan’s destiny according to the will of Taiwanese, Canadian lawmakers said in a resolution marking the second anniversary of that nation’s Indo-Pacific strategy on Monday. The Canadian House of Commons committee on Canada-Chinese relations made the comment as part of 34 recommendations for the new edition of the strategy, adding that Ottawa should back Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, first published in October 2022, emphasized that the region’s security, trade, human rights, democracy and environmental protection would play a crucial role in shaping Canada’s future. The strategy called for Canada to deepen
TECH CONFERENCE: Input from industry and academic experts can contribute to future policymaking across government agencies, President William Lai said Multifunctional service robots could be the next new area in which Taiwan could play a significant role, given its strengths in chip manufacturing and software design, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman and chief executive C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. “In the past two months, our customers shared a lot of their future plans with me. Artificial intelligence [AI] and AI applications were the most talked about subjects in our conversation,” Wei said in a speech at the National Science and Technology Conference in Taipei. TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, counts Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Apple Inc and
RSS