President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday urged the public not to determine the success or failure of her governance based on the performance in the first 100 days of her presidency, adding she would not evaluate Cabinet members according to their short-term achievements.
Tsai made the remarks in a speech delivered at a tea gathering with the media in Taipei, marking the three-month anniversary of her inauguration.
“I do not want others to judge the success or failure of my governance based solely on my performance in the first 100 days. Likewise, I also would not use Cabinet members’ work in the first 100 days to evaluate them,” Tsai said.
Tsai said reforms require time and she would not back down just because she does not see results within a short period of time or encounters difficulties.
Tsai was apparently responding to critics who have cited her lower approval rating as proof of policy failures and the basis for speculation that a Cabinet reshuffle is planned.
Tsai said the focus of her job has remained the same since taking office, which is to “fix problems,” some of which the previous administration either had sought in vain to address or did not have the energy or resources to solve.
“However, people chose us because they wanted a new government to bravely face and tackle problems in a pragmatic manner, instead of shifting the blame onto its predecessors,” Tsai said, adding that she is willing to make changes if the way she handles problems is not well-thought-out.
Looking back at the past three months, Tsai said her administration’s policymaking has revolved around four aspects.
The first is to address long-standing problems facing the nation, Tsai said, such as the apology she issued on Aug. 1 on behalf of the government to Aborigines and her administration’s ongoing efforts to tackle labor disputes.
Tsai said the second area is reforms, including judicial and pension reforms, as well as the legislative passage of the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例) last month.
Lauding the passage of the act as the first step toward achieving transitional justice, Tsai said the purpose of this endeavor is to remind all politicians that what were deemed norms under the former authoritarian regime would not be tolerated in today’s democratic society.
“It is our shared responsibility to create a fairer political environment,” Tsai added.
As for judicial reforms, Tsai said that while her previous picks for the posts of Judicial Yuan president and vice president have sparked controversies, she would nominate new candidates as soon as possible and refer their nominations to the legislature for approval by Sept. 1.
She then turned to pension reforms, which she said are not aimed at triggering class conflicts, further depriving socially disadvantaged people of their rights, or tarnishing certain occupations.
The other two aspects include developing innovation-oriented economic patterns, which are to be facilitated by budget increases next year, and maintaining regional peace and stability, which has seen the government endeavoring to maintain communications with other relevant nations, Tsai said.
She shrugged off criticism that a preliminary agreement on reached between the government and former freeway toll workers was tantamount to “rewarding noisy kids with candy.”
“As far as the government is concerned, what really counts is not making noise, but rather whether the demands are reasonable and whether the government is listening,” Tsai said.
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