Over the past week, people in Taiwan have become acustomed to associating Ketagalan Boulevard with political controversy.
With the peaceful conclusion of Saturday's rally, many people hoped that such open displays of contention had come to an end. They hadn't considered that the Taipei City Government and the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) would each claim responsibility for successfully dispersing the remaining pan-blue supporters, thus sparking an administrative feud for bragging rights.
Since Saturday night, Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (
According to Chinese-language media reports, such operations involve officials from nearly every level of government, from the Presidential Office down to local police units. On Saturday night, Tsai was in charge of making "progress reports" while Yu was responsible for making "administrative system reports."
It was not immediately clear how the two types of reports differ.
Furthermore, Yu stayed at Ketagalan Boulevard until 5:30am yesterday, when the dispersion was completed.
Late last night, NPA Director-General Chang Si-liang (
Chang cited the Law on Local Government Systems (地方自治法) to Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), saying that the law gave the NPA the right to disperse the protestors along Ketagalan Boulevard.
However, this displeased Ma, as the Taipei City Government had been chiefly responsible for dealing with the protesters over the past week.
As the city government would be able to disperse the 100,000 protesters using peaceful means and minimize the impact on the city's traffic, he could not accept the NPA's request to step in during the middle of the operation, Ma said.
Ma said if the NPA insisted on carrying out the dispersion operation itself, it would have to shoulder all possible consequences. Chang decided to withdraw his request.
In reaction to the MOI's attempt to claim credit for the operation last night, Taipei City Government spokesman Wu Yu-sheng (
"Ma received orders from President Chen Shui-bian (
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