Taichung legislator Yan Ching-piao (尊顏清) has been convicted of using public funds to pay for a trip to a hostess KTV. He will serve three and a half years. He will continue to collect his NT$300,000 monthly salary from prison and will retake his seat upon exit. There will be no special election and his reelection in four years, despite having spent almost the entire term in prison, is virtually guaranteed (would you run against him?).
The recently fired Professor Chuang Kuo-rong, who was also banned for live from teaching at NCCU, will be hunger striking in protest. The presidential office came out to note he deserves at least a second chance and that the punishment didn't seem to fit the offense (the offense was campaigning for the DPP and insulting Ma and his father).
I think this highlights a few things: first, the firing was clearly political. Second, the presidential office knows this and is trying to use its clout to reverse or lighten the sentence in the case. Third, the presidential office probably should have just kept their mouth shut to avoid confirming that the case is, in fact, political.
So I'm rather torn; Ma should have just made an unofficial statement, but at the same time, at least they called a spade a spade and asked for the school to give the man a second chance.
I just don't like the presidential office sticking their heads in in cases like this. What if they used that influence to get a buddy hired?
DPP legislators have suggested that instead of injecting cash before 7/4 into infrastructure projects aimed at incoming Chinese tourists , the central government should provide a tax refund of about NT$20,000 to each household.
Of course, since the government is running in a deficit, the premier said no.
The DPP plan strikes me as a hallow gimmick which sounds good but doesn't make sense unless there's a budget surplus of some kind from stronger-than-expected economic growth and reigned in spending. That's not gonna happen.
Some KMT members in Taiwan are calling for Ma Ying-jeou to retake the office of party chairman, but Ma has declined.
MOFA has yet to start checking legislators for duel citizenships.
The Premier promises all eight of the airports Chinese tourists can fly into will be readyby 7/4. I find this dubious, but I also find it dubious many Chinese tourists will fly directly to Taitung.
The Premier once suspected his cell phone to be under surveillance.
Chuang Kuo-rong (莊國榮) will never teach at NCCU again; I believe his firing was probably political, but there's no proof of it.
The Premier will also present a relief plan within two months to help the transportation industry to cope with high oil prices.
The conference for World Youth Day in Australia originally had Taiwan listed as "Taiwan, Province of China." This has since been corrected to Taiwan (thanks for the update on that, Maddog). You can see for yourself here (http://www.xt3.com) http://www.wyd2008.org/index.php/en/user/register.
Asked about the first 100 days of a hypothetical Obama administration at a fundraiser in Denver, Obama said he would focus on interim progress toward three key goals: troop withdrawals from Iraq, health care access for all and action on energy and climate change, according to a pool report of the fundraiser.
On Iraq, Obama said, the public should expect within 100 days of taking office he would convene the Joint Chiefs of Staff to devise a plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq.
He also set a goal of proposing legislation on his promise of affordable health care coverage available for all quickly upon arriving in the White House. "We need a bill...by March or April to get going before the political season sets in," Obama said.
Obama also promised to take early action on energy and climate change. "We will have to be immediately prepared to send a signal to the world" on alternative energy, he said.
The Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional article two of the Civil Associations Act (人民團體法) , which had prohibited any civic organization from supporting Communism or the splitting of the national territory (aka, Taiwanese Independence).
The court was asked to rule in a case that started in 1998 where Taipei City had used this article to reject an application to establish the "Taipei City Waishengren Taiwanese Independence Promotion Organization" (台北市『外省人』台灣獨立促進會).
Aboriginal Affairs -1 A friend reports: the new Aboriginal minister who refused interview requests for a month, And when she finally had her "inaugural press conference" a month after her inauguration,she only left 15 mins for the media to ask questions.So she was almost beaten that day with the pissed CNA reporter protested first.Then China Times and Liberty Times followed.
Poll: 28% of people who voted for Ma said they're not satisfied with Ma's performance according to poll results mentioned in the pan-blue 新聞夜總會 last night.
There are a few key sites, that update regularly but not excessively, that I think are key for following the trends in this election. Here are my top six "must visits":
electoral-vote.com takes all the latest polling data on a state-by-state basis, integrates it with three algorithms that average out the last several polls, and projects the likely winner of a state as well as the electoral-vote breakdown. One look a day will keep you updated on the trends, and they have a Firefox plug in that lets you view the latest results in your status bar without ever visiting their page.
fivethirtyeight.com Sort of a glorified version of Electoral-vote. They have a lot of interesting data and charts, and I recommend visiting them once every day or so as well (Thank god for RSS readers!)
news and views from progressive Asian Pacific Americans participating in Democratic Party politics."
According to the Executive Yuan. We will see -- that would be a big project requiring construction coordination from both sides, and I suspect would be very difficult. I'm not the only one.
Meanwhile, KMT legislator Gen Shuai Hua-min (帥化民) (Retired) is suggesting Jinmen people hold a referendum on removing the military troops stationed there, which the Premier sensibly considered dangerous if people were inadequately educated on the potential danger of such a move.
That's just below a passing grade here.
Additionally, 47.8 percent of people were satisfied with the Executive Yuan's performance (44.2% unsatisfied); 63.3 percent were unsatisfied with the government's efforts to stem inflation;
The Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall, formerly the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, is undergoing another makeover tonight after 6:30pm; all of 228 and democracy displays in the main hall will be removed, leaving the Abe Lincoln-like statue of Chiang Kai-shek to brood over his legacy alone.
My guess is the move is not only ideological, but also designed to placate Chinese tourists coming in July. Heaven forbid they see pictures of protesting Taiwanese demanding control of their own country and future!
Now, regarding this "Mr. Ma" issue:
Ma told reporters at the Presidential Office on Tuesday that having the head of ARATS address him as “Mr Ma” while he calls him “Mr Chen” would be “the best way to avoid the question of inequality and put aside disputes.”I recall when the KMT refused to call President Chen by his title after 2004, and instead insisted on using "Mr." The United Daily News kept it up until the end of Chen's second term. That was decidedly not a neutral term and was aimed at delegitimizing Chen's administration. The Chinese refusal to address Ma as "President" has the same goal; the sad part is the KMT's cognitive dissonance and acceptance of this downgrade.
...Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Chia-chin (李嘉進) defended Ma yesterday.
The public should not focus too much on the titles Chen and Ma use, Lee said.
“I think the title ‘Mr’ is a very neutral term,” Lee said, adding that concrete development in cross-strait affairs and reciprocity were more important than titles.
This is a pretty terrible move, if true.
Taipei Times reports:
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government asked the US to halt weapons sales to Taiwan in order to curry favor with Beijing ahead of last week’s cross-strait negotiations, the latest edition of Defense News reported.
However, experts quoted by Defense News were concerned that the freeze, originally intended for the duration of the cross-strait negotiations, could extend until a new administration is installed in the White House next year.
The periodical on Monday quoted unnamed sources as saying the temporary freeze had been requested because the new government, worried by a troubled beginning to its term, feared the arms issue could jeopardize a promised deal on direct cross-strait flights and the entry of Chinese tourists — key platforms of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) election campaign.
The magazine quoted Mark Stokes, the Pentagon’s country director for China and Taiwan from 1997 to 2004, as saying: “It’s the law of physics. Once you lose that momentum, it’s nearly impossible to get it back.”
...Defense News also clarified its earlier report on elements in the US government that want arms sales to Taiwan ended. It quoted an unnamed US government official as saying that officials dubbed as “panda huggers” in the US embassy in Beijing, the US Treasury Department and the US State Department were conspiring to stop arms sales to Taipei independent of the KMT government’s agenda.
... “It is incorrect to say that the Bush administration has no intention of selling arms to Taiwan in the remainder of its term,” [Taiwan’s representative in Washington Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday].
Meanwhile, the DPP yesterday alleged that a top US official visited the Presidential Office after Ma’s inauguration to meet National Security Council Secretary-General Su Chi (蘇起).
Cheng said Su told the official “point blank” that to improve cross-strait relations, arms procurements would have to be suspended.
The DPP said Ma was not present at the meeting.
I was talking to a buddy the other day and we started talking about how the new administration has been doing. I'll be using some of his observations here and some of my own.
Here's the way I score it:
Oil prices -1 Although there's not much to do about the price increase, announcing a day early to "surprise" everyone, or whatever the logic was, didn't go over well at all.
Diaoyutai -1 The government was really slow to react and then went overboard with the rhetoric, thanks to a few dumb questions from legislators. Relations with Japan were not improved by the government's statements. But at least the presidential office managed to cancel a planned visit to the islands by legislators.
Green card issue -1 Given all the hoopla over Ma's own green card, the failure to anticipate attacks on cabinet members who had green cards at some point in the past, some quite recently, was a major oversight (even though I consider a green card a non-issue). Had the government publicly announced the relevant peoples' card status and the cancellation of them, instead of having the issue sprung on them, it would have been much better.
Cross-strait relations +1 Although there are legitimate complaints about the lack of cargo flights in agreements so far, things are progressing more or less exactly as the government promised on this front. So, I think whether you agree with what they're doing or not, they get a point for accomplishing their goals .
Whoops, almost forgot one:
Construction projects 0 The KMT effort to inject a bunch of money into locals with a special supplementary budget is a wash because of the credible accusations that blue regions knew about and could prepare their monetary requests earlier than green-controlled counties. But plenty of people were happy to see the money flowing again. So I give them a zero.
Feiren adds:
-1 to the Liu admin for approving those coral ships
Total score so far: -3
