Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday initiated the first stage of Cabinet reforms after the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) losses in the nine-in-one elections on Nov. 24, approving the resignation of three ministers.
Lai called a Cabinet-level meeting at the Executive Yuan in Taipei to discuss policy reforms, in which he approved resignations tendered by Minister of Transportation and Communications Wu Hong-mo (吳宏謀), Environmental Protection Administration Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) and Council of Agriculture Minister Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢).
All ministers were at the meeting except Hakka Affairs Council Minister Lee Yong-te (李永得), who had prior engagements, but had rendered a report on ways to improve his agency prior to the meeting.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
After the results of the elections were announced on Sunday last week, Wu, Lee Ying-yuan and Lin had tendered verbal resignations to Lai, and they yesterday again expressed their desire to resign after presenting reports on how to improve their organizations, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka told a post-meeting news conference.
They were steadfast in their resolve to resign, as they believed their policies had failed to gain the public’s trust, she said, adding that Lai approved the resignations following the meeting.
From Tuesday, the politically appointed deputy ministers at the three ministries are to take over as acting ministers, Kolas said, adding that the premier would announce their successors in due time.
Taipei Times file photo
Lai did not give any instruction after the three-hour meeting, but was to have all the suggestions made by his Cabinet members organized by last night so that he could process the information and personally report to the public in detail at a future news conference how policy reforms would be carried out, she said.
However, he did offer some remarks regarding the DPP’s election rout, she added.
The DPP did not win people’s trust after it became the ruling party for the second time because it failed to think from the public’s perspective, Kolas quoted Lai as saying.
“We admit that our communication with the public was less than ideal and that we were unable to promptly address public complaints,” Lai was quoted as saying.
“It is the shared opinion of all Cabinet-level agencies that the reforms led by the government should be able to give people hope,” he was quoted as saying. “We must realize that it is the government’s responsibility to lessen people’s burden. We must stand by every family through the hardships in their lives.”
“While we [the government] have our core values, we must take a more humanistic approach backed by more humanistic policy explanations, so that people will understand,” he was quoted as saying.
Several ministers also blamed the DPP’s election losses on the administration’s penchant for touting “cold” figures about its achievements, which failed to win the hearts of people, Kolas said.
Additionally, not only had the government been “virtually defenseless and inert” against the dissemination of disinformation, it had also been inept at using popular social media to communicate with the public in their language, she cited some officials as saying.
Before the meeting ended, Lai, seeing that many ministry officials appeared to be frustrated, encouraged them to keep pushing policies that have won the public’s praise, while remediating the ones that need improvement, Kolas said.
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: MOFA demanded Beijing stop its military intimidation and ‘irrational behavior’ that endanger peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region The Presidential Office yesterday called on China to stop all “provocative acts,” saying ongoing Chinese military activity in the nearby waters of Taiwan was a “blatant disruption” of the “status quo” of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. Defense officials said they have detected Chinese ships since Monday, both off Taiwan and farther out along the first island chain. They described the formations as two walls designed to demonstrate that the waters belong to China. The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said it had detected 53 military aircraft operating around the nation over the past 24 hours, as well
‘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
LEAP FORWARD: The new tanks are ‘decades more advanced than’ the army’s current fleet and would enable it to compete with China’s tanks, a source said A shipment of 38 US-made M1A2T Abrams tanks — part of a military procurement package from the US — arrived at the Port of Taipei early yesterday. The vehicles are the first batch of 108 tanks and other items that then-US president Donald Trump announced for Taiwan in 2019. The Ministry of National Defense at the time allocated NT$40.5 billion (US$1.25 billion) for the purchase. To accommodate the arrival of the tanks, the port suspended the use of all terminals and storage area machinery from 6pm last night until 7am this morning. The tanks are expected to be deployed at the army’s training
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