Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Alliance names lawmaker as first candidate for recall

Taipei Times

Neil Peng, left, and film director Ko I-chen, the initiators of the Constitution 133 Alliance hold up a sign with the letters BMW during a press conference yesterday. The letters stand for bamian wu, which is Chinese for “recall Wu [Yusheng].”
Photo: CNA

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) was yesterday named as the first candidate for a civic group’s recall campaign because of his consistent alignment with President and KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) rather than with the public he is meant to serve, according to the group.

The Constitution 133 Alliance, recently established with the goal of recalling legislators it sees as incompetent, told a press conference that it would soon launch a recall campaign against Wu, a former KMT caucus whip who is known to be one of Ma’s confidants.

The misinterpretation of stability

Taipei Times Editorial

The presence of up to 250,000 people at a protest on Aug. 3 made the government succumb to public pressure with the removal of the military judiciary in peacetime. The protest was billed as a watershed moment for Taiwan as well as the beginning of a new civil movement. Things have begun to change.

There was criticism of the hundreds of people who “ambushed” the Joint Central Government Building and occupied the plaza on Sunday in protest at the Ministry of the Interior’s (MOI) ignorance of numerous land expropriation cases across the country, in particular the one in Dapu Borough (大埔), Miaoli County.

US, PRC plan joint defense task force

Taipei Times

US and Chinese defense officials plan to set up a joint task force to deal with issues of mutual concern, but weapons sales to Taiwan will not be part of the agenda, an unnamed Pentagon official said on Wednesday.

The official’s statement came after Chinese media reported that the US has given a “positive response” to a proposal to discuss the arms sales with China.

Chinese media reports quoted Rear Admiral Guan Youfei (關友飛), who spoke to Chinese journalists on Tuesday in Washington, where Chinese Minister of Defense Chang Wanquan (常萬全) had met with US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel a day earlier.

Taiwanese Spring in the making

Peter Huang 黃文雄

Several days ago, about 30 young people went into the compound in front of the Executive Yuan, spattered the building and gold name plaque with eggs and paint and began a sit-down protest.

They were protesting the broken promise, made three years ago by then-premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and then-minister of the interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) to the residents of Dapu Borough (大埔) in Miaoli County whose four homes were forcibly demolished last month.

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