Executive Yuan Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said yesterday that the government would soon provide an explanation on why the applications from some of the counties looking for an upgrade to special municipality status were accepted while others were turned down.
Su said an explanation would be forthcoming once the review process had been completed.
It is expected that the result of the Executive Yuan’s deliberations on whether Tainan County and Tainan City can be merged into a special municipality will be made public by next Thursday at the latest.
The Local Government Act (地方制度法) states that the final decision, following the preliminary review by a temporary committee of 10 officials and 15 academics, rests with the Executive Yuan.
The committee unanimously approved the upgrade of Taipei County to a municipality and the merger and upgrade of Kaohsiung County and Kaohsiung City, as well as Taichung County and Taichung City. However, it rejected proposals by Taoyuan County and Changhua County to be upgraded to municipalities and the merger and upgrade application filed by Yunlin County and Chiayi County.
Members of the committee were divided on the merger and upgrade plan for Tainan County and Tainan City.
Su said that the Executive Yuan would not refer the issue to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) before making a final decision as “the review is an internal process within the Executive Yuan.”
He made the comments in response to a report in yesterday’s Chinese-language United Daily News that said the issue would be discussed during Ma’s weekly meeting with Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), Premier Liu Chao-shiuan (劉兆玄), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Po-hsiung (吳伯雄), to be held on Tuesday.
In related news, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said the KMT would not be frightened if the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and former premiers Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) to stand in the year-end special municipality mayoral elections, as suggested in a “dream candidates list” proposed by the DPP caucus.
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), who is alleged to be eyeing the Taipei County commissioner seat, said the KMT would be fully prepared whether Tsai were to enter the Taipei City or Taipei County races or not.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
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