Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The government on Tuesday announced the lifting of a ban on most food imports from Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture and surrounding areas, initially implemented over concerns of contamination following the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster.

The announcement had been expected since a failed referendum on the reinstatement of an import ban on pork containing traces of ractopamine in December last year.

The government has since then been expected to focus on negotiating international trade agreements, especially joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which the ban on Japanese food imports might have jeopardized.

A re-election is reportedly to be held for the board of Dajia Jenn Lann Temple (大甲鎮瀾宮) in Taichung’s Dajia District (大甲), although few details are available. That a board re-election for a legal entity such as a temple is shrouded in mystery, with the secrecy even extending to something as fundamental as the temple’s charter, is deeply suspicious, leaving some people to presume that there is something dishonest going on.

Former Non-Partisan Solidarity Union legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標), who allegedly has links to the criminal underworld, has been the temple’s chairman for more than two decades. Whether he would continue in the job, and how he would indefinitely cling to such a lucrative position, would largely depend on the “perpetual board members” he holds sway over.