Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (
Ma also accused the central government of neglecting society's demands for the truth about the shooting of President Chen Shui-bian (
"The central government rushed to do things that it was not supposed to do, yet it failed to do things that really need to be taken care of," Ma said yesterday.
Ma, who is also vice chairman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), said he suspected that the investigative panel that has been set up to investigate the shooting was low level and had little power. He urged Chen to quickly establish an investigative committee.
State Public Prosecutor-General Lu Jen-fa (
"I maintain that an independent and high-level investigative committee should be set up to investigate the shooting, just as the US Supreme Court did when handling the JFK assassination. Only by doing so can people be convinced of the result," Ma said.
When asked by the media about the events on Saturday night following a huge protest organized by the pan-blue camp, Ma acknowledged that he received two phone calls on Sunday morning at about 1am from Chang Si-liang (
Ma said Chang offered to act on Ma's behalf to disperse the crowd, which numbered about 1,000 at the time, and had refused to leave Ketagalan Boulevard even though the rally was legally over at 6pm. Ma said he turned down Chang's suggestion.
Much of the crowd voluntarily moved to the nearby Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall plaza, but a few hundred had to be dragged or pushed away.
Ma yesterday said that "it was strange for the NPA to have its hand in the dispersion at the last minute."
"I think it was illegal, unfeasible and unnecessary for the NPA to intervene in the dispersion," Ma said, stressing that the city government had handled the protests for one week and the police and the crowd "had developed a good interaction."
Besides, the city government had planned to disperse the crowd with placatory measures, he added.
"I can't imagine what would have happened if the central government had come in at the last minute," Ma said.
The pan-blue supporters had been blocking Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office for one week after KMT Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) claimed that the presidential election was unfair and that he would file a lawsuit to nullify the election.
At various points during the week, the crowd had broken the Assembly and Parade Law (集會遊行法), but Ma refused to disperse them and eventually issued permits for them to demonstrate legally.
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
RSS