Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Ma must stop using the law as a weapon

Chu Ping-tzu 祝平次

One of the first slogans of the Sunflower movement was: “A 9 percent president should not keep doing as he sees fit.” It was an expression of one of the student-led protesters’ four main demands, which called for a citizens’ constitutional conference to be held because a president with an approval rating of only 9 percent has lost legitimacy to rule.

However, the government is not only suffering from low approval ratings, courts across the nation have ruled against it in many legal cases that have arisen from controversial policies.

Protests greet Ma at Academia Sinica

Taipei Times

Former Financial Supervision Commission chairman Shih Chun-chi, right, protests outside the Academia Sinica during President Ma Ying-jeou’s visit to the institution in Taipei’s Nangang District yesterday.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times

Several hundred researchers at the Academia Sinica shouted appeals first made by the Sunflower movement at President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday when he visited the nation’s most eminent national research institution for an international conference about the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) issue.

While Ma was giving the keynote speech at the conference, Chen Yi-shen (陳儀深) and Shiu Wen-tang (許文堂), associate research fellows at the college’s Institute of Modern History, and Paul Jobin, an associate professor at the University of Paris Diderot, silently held aloft posters with messages for the president.

US congressman questions trade deal

Taipei Times

A US congressman said that the cross-strait service trade agreement increases the risk of a direct conflict between China and the US.

Democratic Representative Alan Grayson, a member of the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, wrote US Secretary of State John Kerry seeking a full analysis of potential effects the deal may have on US interests.

Grayson said that the trade deal is a possible step toward political and economic integration “between the two political entities,” adding that the integration “may be disadvantageous both to Taiwan and to the US.”

Implications of sunflowers for Beijing

Taipei Times Editorial

As the Sunflower movement protest drew to at least a temporary end, its subsequent development will be closely watched not only by officials of the embattled President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration, but also those in Beijing’s Zhongnanhai.

It was not that Beijing was surprised at seeing such social unrest. Tens of thousands of protests take place in China annually, with civilian deaths resulting from brutal crackdowns reported regularly, despite the government’s efforts to hide such information.

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