The Kaohsiung Metro’s circular light rail line has finally been completed, with the soft opening of its final section on Dec. 31 last year. This moment had been delayed for two years, mostly because of former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), who was in office for a year and a half without achieving anything. The first thing he did on taking office in December 2018 was to suspend construction of the light rail line, which was not resumed until two years later.
Han had no particular reason for halting the construction, except that the circular line was a policy achievement of Kaohsiung’s previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, which made him unwilling to carry on where the DPP left off. Han’s suspension of the project completely ignored the needs of Kaohsiung residents and the overall plan for the municipality’s infrastructure. Kaohsiung residents were frustrated, but at first there was nothing they could do.
Later, Han began to reveal his corruption and carelessness. Instead of getting on with his job as mayor, he stood as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate in the 2020 presidential election. During the election campaign, people gradually came to see his true face. The public realized that he had no particular talent other than his propensity for making empty promises. This led to a big victory for the DPP in the presidential election, followed by a successful campaign to recall Han, which was the first recall of a municipal mayor in the history of the nation. Furthermore, the KMT was heavily defeated in the election for a new mayor to replace him. Taken together, Han’s presidential election defeat, embarrassing recall vote and the defeat of the KMT’s candidate to replace him add up to three “no” votes for Han.
Despite his triple rejection, the KMT regards Han as a major asset. In Saturday’s legislative elections, Han is first in line on the KMT’s list for legislators-at-large, which guarantees that he will have a seat in the new legislature. If none of the three main parties — the DPP, the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — win more than half of the seats in the Legislative Yuan, the KMT and the TPP have let it be known that they would use their combined majority to vote Han in as the legislative speaker — a position that is not subject to recall votes. However, many people cannot stand the prospect of a thrice-rejected politician being put at the helm of the legislature. If you agree, please make sure not just to vote, but to vote for the right candidates to take the right road. Taiwan cannot afford to let its engine idle for the next four years.
Lin Bo-feng is a legal supervisor with a master’s degree from Soochow University’s School of Law.
Translated by Julian Clegg
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number