The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday blasted President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) for being rich in slogans, but ineffective when it comes to actually taking action in recurring food safety scandals.
“Ma is good at superficial talk, but is incompetent when it comes to action. When he talks, it is all rubbish,” DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said.
Lin said the growing list of scandals in recent years have left the public living in fear and scared of eating toxic additives or food that could cause to cancer or other illnesses.
The melamine-tainted milk powder scandal in 2008, the plasticizer-additive food scandal in 2011 and the contaminated flour and starch scandal this May were on the list.
“Whenever there is a tainted food scandal, Ma makes grand declarations, as he did at the Chinese Nationalist Party’s [KMT] Central Standing Committee meeting [yesterday] about the adulterated cooking oil scandal,” Lin said.
“Ma is deceiving the public with word play, re-arranging his sloganeering with dubious catchphrases,” Lin said.
“With the outbreak of yet another food scandal, the Ma administration is going through the same old motions. It convenes a meeting and makes declarations, but nothing ever gets done, and the problem does not get solved,” Lin said. “This shows Ma has neither the resolve nor the means to solve problems for the public. Ma has no credibility and he is not capable of dealing with these problems.”
As recently as a Sept. 5 meeting with food safety and consumer rights groups, Ma said that “to eat food that is safe and to eat without fear is the most fundamental right of the people, and the government will ensure that this right is safeguarded,” Lin said.
“One month later, we are in the middle of an adulterated cooking oil scandal, which has greatly damaged consumers’ trust in food safety as well as bankrupted the Ma administration’s credibility. We are completely disappointed with Ma and his government’s handling of these food scandals,” Lin said.
In related news, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) accused Ma of incompetence, saying that Taiwan has lost much of its internationally credibility because of the recurring food scandals.
“The Ma administration is an irresponsible lot. It does things in a haphazardly and careless fashion. The main qualification for a leader is to have principles. If Ma is unable to act, then he should return governance to the people,” Lee said.
Lee also accused businesspeople for being greedy and caring only about making a profit.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS