The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday that on the eve of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 100th day in office, Ma’s contention that close economic exchanges with China would improve the domestic economy had been proven wrong.
Chuang Suo-hang (莊碩漢), director of the DPP’s Policy Research Committee, told a press conference that while the former DPP government had managed to keep Consumer Price Index (CPI) growth at about 1 percent, the CPI had been out of control since Ma came to power, reaching 5.92 percent in June.
He said the Core Consumer Price Index had also gone up more than 10 percent during the same month.
PHOTO: CHIEN JUNG-FONG, TAIPEI TIMES
Statistics show that more than 9,000 factory workers lost their jobs in June, meaning 9,000 families were suffering increased hardship, Chuang said.
Chuang said Ma had broken his campaign pledge to improve the economy if he was elected.
Ma believed that opening the country’s economy to China would boost the economy, but his China-leaning policies have not only failed to profit the country, they have also created a crisis over sovereignty and national security, he said.
Department of Culture and Information Director Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said “Ma’s 100 days in office were not a golden 100 days, but a 100 days of recession.”
He said the misery index had reached 9.98 in June, the highest figure since 1981, adding that while the government has attributed rising consumer prices to high oil prices, the CPI has not climbed down since oil prices dropped.
Cheng said the stock market had plummeted by 2,348 points over the three months, with total stock value dropping by NT$5.74 trillion (US$1.81 billion), adding that the index had lost as much as 25 percent of its value within three months.
He said that wage growth rate had also fallen to 4.1 percent, the lowest in 28 years.
As the general public has suffered much hardship during these three months, he said the DPP was calling on the population to stand up and protest the poor economic policies of the Ma administration during a demonstration on Saturday.
In related news, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday it would not hold any event to counter the rally on Saturday.
KMT Culture and Communication Committee head Lee Chien-rong (李建榮) said the party respected the people’s right to assembly and that the appropriate procedures had been followed by the organizers.
As the governing party, Lee said the KMT would not make the same mistakes the DPP committed during its eight years in power by holding numerous rallies to disturb public order. The KMT will focus its efforts on improving the economy, rather than gathering supporters to confront the DPP and its supporters.
At a separate setting yesterday, Development and Evaluation Commission Minister Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) told reporters that the Government Information Office would make public a report today on the Ma administration’s performance to mark its first 100 days in office.
Jiang said the report would include policies implemented by the government and its vision for the country’s future.
In line with the government’s energy-saving campaign, the report will only be released online.
Meanwhile, Jiang said speeding up a draft statute aimed at streamlining the executive branch of the government was high on the government’s list of priorities for the latter half of this year.
Jiang said his commission would make an amendment to the Executive Yuan Organization Statute (行政院組織法), which would cut the number of agencies under the Executive Yuan from 36 to 26.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Residents have called on the Taipei City Government to reconsider its plan to demolish a four-decades-old pedestrian overpass near Daan Forest Park. The 42-year-old concrete and steel structure that serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads is to be closed on Tuesday in preparation for demolition slated for completion by the end of the month. However, in recent days some local residents have been protesting the planned destruction of the intersection overpass that is rendered more poetically as “sky bridge” in Chinese. “This bridge carries the community’s collective memory,” said a man surnamed Chuang
FATALITIES: The storm claimed at least two lives — a female passenger in a truck that was struck by a falling tree and a man who was hit by a utility pole Workers cleared fallen trees and shop owners swept up debris yesterday after one of the biggest typhoons to hit the nation in decades claimed at least two lives. Typhoon Kong-rey was packing winds of 184kph when it slammed into eastern Taiwan on Thursday, uprooting trees, triggering floods and landslides, and knocking out power as it swept across the nation. A 56-year-old female foreign national died from her injuries after the small truck she was in was struck by a falling tree on Provincial Highway 14A early on Thursday. The second death was reported at 8pm in Taipei on Thursday after a 48-year-old man
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm earlier today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, in this year's Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am, the CWA said. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) with a 100km radius, it said. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA meteorologist Huang En-hung (黃恩宏) said. However, a more accurate forecast would be made on Wednesday, when Yinxing is
RSS