Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Defending the use of nonviolence

Chien Hsi-chie

Earlier this month, a group of young people staged a demonstration, throwing paint at the Executive Yuan building, writing slogans and staging an occupation of the Ministry of the Interior building.

Many people disapproved of their behavior, saying that it was an insult to a state institution and that the protesters had defaced public buildings and obstructed the normal operation of public services for people going about their everyday affairs. These people have described the demonstration as an unwarranted act of violence against the public, rejecting the idea that it could be regarded as a nonviolent protest.

Government must protect farmland

Du Yu 杜宇

Taiwan is founded on farming, indeed the development of human civilization has relied on advances in agriculture. It is important that agricultural reform policies are well thought through, so that one false move does not set off a destructive chain reaction.

Many governments have come to grief throughout history because of food shortages, yet the Council of Agriculture has introduced a string of major policies: opening Taiwan up to imports of US beef injected with ractopamine; canceling inoculations against foot-and-mouth disease; establishing agricultural distribution centers in free economic demonstration zones; massively deregulating Chinese investment in Taiwanese agriculture; and opening up designated agricultural areas for electricity generation.

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.

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