Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Construction laws need a revamp

Taipei Times Editorial

On Thursday evening, many people living near Lane 94, Dazhi Street in Taipei’s Zhongshan District (中山) heard a loud thud from a nearby construction site. Then tiles in their homes began to fall, large cracks appeared on walls and iron bars on windows bent. while a few buildings seemed to be tilting. Police and firefighters quickly arrived and found that several adjoining buildings were leaning and had large cracks in their walls, while the road surface had crumbled and partly collapsed. They evacuated more than 100 people and cordoned off the surrounding area.

After about two hours, at 10:49pm, as Taipei City Government officials and Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) were at the site assessing the situation and leading operations, another large rumbling sound was heard and one of the buildings suddenly sank, with the first floor crushed underground.

Ko’s house woes: a mother’s meddling

Sophia Lee 李欣芬

Chinese-lanuage media recently reported that Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) four-story house in Hsinchu County has an illegal rooftop construction. During the interview, Ko’s mother, Ho Jui-ying (何瑞英), wailed into the microphone that “knives are out for me because my son is running for president,” and shed many tears in front of the camera.

Ko is far from the only one whose candidacy has elicited media interest. All former candidates running for president have been subjected to close scrutiny, regardless of their political affiliation. Ho would be mistaken if she thought she could make the media attention go away or garner sympathy with a few tears.

When ‘white’ is the new black

Taipei Times Editorial

Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman and presidential candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) seems to be in deep water lately. An opinion poll released by online news outlet My-Formosa.com shows that while Vice President William Lai (賴清德) continues to lead with 35.3 percent, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) has climbed back to second place with 18.8 percent, surpassing Ko’s 15.1 percent.

Yet, the drop in ranking is nothing compared with Ko’s plummeting support among young people, an age group considered Ko’s “iron base.” For the first time, Lai has a much higher support rate in the 20-29 age group with 43.3 percent than Ko’s 27.7 percent; Ko only surpassed Lai by 4 percent in the 30-39 age group.

Focus needs to be advancements

Arthur Chang 張崇廉

Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp (高端疫苗), the manufacturer of the only domestically made COVID-19 vaccine to have received emergency use authorization in Taiwan, recently announced its out-licensing agreement with the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) hosted by the WHO and the UN-backed Medicine Patent Pool.

This is the first time that a vaccine manufacturer will use C-TAP to offer its patent and know-how for a COVID-19 vaccine, which should have cleared Medigen’s name after the slander and criticisms hurled at it by opposition parties over the past two years. As it is now election campaign season, opposition parties have focused their fire on criticizing the governing party, yet none of them have offered any constructive policies of their own. Their efforts of casting aspersions at Medigen should have taught them that such behavior would only get them so far in terms of garnering votes. Instead, they should turn to introducing policies for the following issues, as they are pressing challenges that await Taiwan’s next president:

More Articles...