“We have restored Yilan’s pride because we are more cautious,” said Yilan County Commissioner Lin Tsung-hsien (林聰賢), who won back the county’s top office for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) four years ago, when explaining how he differs from the commissioner he defeated.
Having been a stronghold for the DPP and anti-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) activists since the 1980s, Yilan saw single-term former commissioner Lu Kuo-hua (呂國華) as its only KMT-affiliated county commissioner since 1981. Lu served from 2005 to 2009.
In an recent interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper), Lin said that since his election in 2009, he had many achievements that the KMT was unable to accomplish, such as restoring the popular Yilan International Children’s Folklore and Folkgames Festival, which Lu suspended.
Lin said that in the past four years, he has insisted on pushing forward policies that he believes to be right despite encountering obstacles, such as banning chemical herbicides in farms and ending the use of unprocessed chicken manure as fertilizer.
Upon his inauguration, Lin said he discovered that the county government faced significant financial problems. The situation led him to make several urgent adjustments to rescue the county from needing financial “intensive care.”
“Another issue is that houses are rapidly increasing in rural Yilan,” Lin said, adding that the central government’s loosened regulations on farmhouse construction have led to a disaster in the county.
Yilan became the first county in the nation to regulate farmhouses and has cut down on the number of houses on farmland.
Lin said that he plans to run a campaign for the Nov. 29 elections built on policy platforms supporting green lifestyles and green industries, making environmental issues the focus of future policy actions.
Commenting on a recently approved straight-line railroad connecting Taipei and Yilan, Lin said “the Taipei-Yilan railroad line must also serve as a subway,” otherwise, railroad construction that costs NT$50 billion (US$1.6 billion) would not be too helpful if the only function is to save 18 minutes of travel time.
Regarding his KMT rival, Health Promotion Administration Director-General Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞), Lin said that “my only impression of her is that she is good at talking.”
“Chiou has criticized the high suicide rate in Yilan, but she forgets that suicide prevention is partly her agency’s responsibility,” Lin said, also chiding Chiou for not speaking out for Yilan when the county’s National Yang Ming University Hospital sought to be upgraded to a medical center.
Chiou also said that she is opposed to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, but she is not acting accordingly, Lin said, asking how residents of Yilan could expect her to defend and promote their rights and welfare.
“You could see whether a person would be willing to stand with the public and make sacrifices to shoulder the responsibility of service,” Lin said.
He said that when the nation was affected by SARS in 2003, then-director of the Taipei Department of Health Chiou inspected a quarantine center at a hospital in Taipei while wearing full protective gear, while other medical personnel had nothing at all to guard against infection.
“Now Chiou is running for Yilan county commissioner because the president [Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is also KMT chairman] asked her to do so; I do not see her passion for the county,” Lin said.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but