Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

China aims to divide and conquer

Paul Lin 林保華

With US presidential nominees Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald Trump battling it out for the top job, the US lacks the energy and focus to take care of international affairs; the last thing Washington wants at the moment is for a war to flare up.

This explains the White House’s muted response to the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s verdict on the South China dispute between China and the Philippines: It confined itself to calling for a peaceful resolution to the dispute and warning each side to refrain from doing anything that might intensify the conflict.

Tsai to head judicial reform committee

Taipei Times

Presidential Office spokesman Alex Huang (黃重諺) yesterday said that President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) would head a preparatory committee for national affairs conferences on judicial reform to be set up by the office, in an effort to prevent the pending nominations of the Judicial Yuan president and vice president from impeding long-awaited progress toward judicial reform.

“Actually, in addition to serving as convener, [Tsai] will also designate a civil opinion leader to be the deputy convener of the committee, which will consist of legal and non-legal professionals,” Huang said.

The problem with Tsai’s top judicial candidates

James Wang 王景弘

President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) nominees for Judicial Yuan president and vice president last month faced serious criticism, with many people questioning the candidates’ backgrounds. The government responded by saying “people did as they were told during the Martial Law era.” The statement is neither right nor helpful in defending the candidates.

The truth is, under martial law, most people chose to avoid politics, and preferred not to challenge the authorities. They wanted, after all, to stay out of prison. However, they also wanted to avoid becoming accomplices to injustice or becoming brainwashed.

Taiwanese in US demand ethnicity option in census

Taipei Times

Several Taiwanese-American organizations on Friday issued a joint letter, calling on the US Census Bureau to include a “Taiwanese” option to answer the ethnicity question in the next US national census in 2020.

The US Constitution requires a national census once every 10 years and according to the US Census Bureau, an individual’s response to the ethnicity question is based on self-identification.

More Articles...