Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday tried to convince the Ministry of National Defense (MND) to postpone its annual Yushan military drill so that president-elect Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) could attend.
“The drill is always held in April. The new president has the authority to reschedule it once he assumes office, Minister of National Defense Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) said during a Diplomacy and National Defense Committee meeting yesterday morning in response to a question by KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方).
Ma has rejected the Presidential Office’s invitation to attend the drill next Tuesday, saying he already had other obligations.
Tsai said that the warfare simulation is organized by the National Security Bureau (NSB).
While I have no problem with rescheduling the simulation, only the president has the authority to make such a decision, Tsai said.
Tsai and NSB Deputy Director Tsai Teh-sheng (蔡得勝) said they were ready to assist the new president in any way possible.
The committee also criticized the ministry after it was discovered that military prosecutors had begun to summon reporters during their investigations into the establishment of the private arms trading firm Taiwan Goal.
Three reporters who cover military affairs received telephone calls from military prosecutors while Tsai and ministry officials were at the committee meeting yesterday morning.
The prosecutors said the reporters were being summoned to help with the investigation.
The calls immediately became the focus of the discussion. KMT Legislator Justin Chou (周守訓) criticized the ministry for misleading the prosecutors, adding that the priority should not be finding the reporters who broke the story.
KMT Legislator Alex Fai (費鴻泰) asked General Political Warfare Bureau Director-General Yang Tien-hsiao (楊天嘯) to reveal who had given the order to call on the reporters. Tsai, speaking on Yang’s behalf, said that he, not Yang, had given the order.
He said he would respect freedom of speech but that reporters should obey the law.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test