No decentralized purchase of vaccines
CURBING SOLO EFFORTS: Taiwan centralizes vaccine importation to ‘avoid chaos and confusion,’ the center said in response to criticism by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je
By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter
The central government alone is in charge of importing and approving the use of COVID-19 vaccines, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) yesterday told a media briefing in Taipei, responding to calls for the involvement of local governments in Taiwan’s vaccine drive.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) had said that Chen, who heads the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC), concealed that local government officials could import vaccines doses through pharmaceutical companies.
EDITORIAL: The ROC Constitution: Sense, caution
Taiwan New Constitution Foundation founder Koo Kwang-ming (辜寬敏), expressing frustration at what he says is President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) and the government’s reluctance to write a new constitution, on Sunday announced his intention to resign as Presidential Office adviser.
For Koo, a new constitution, for democratic Taiwan, is an indispensable step in the nation’s normalization.
He is absolutely correct in this, but that does not necessarily mean it is the direction the government should take the nation at this juncture.
The Republic of China (ROC) Constitution was not written with Taiwan’s topography, population, political or legal system, size or history in mind. It was written in, and for, another country entirely, maintained in Taiwan originally with the expectation that the exiled Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime would return to China, and later to bolster the fiction that the ROC of the past, und
Entries open for Presidential Culture Awards
By Sherry Hsiao / Staff reporter
Applications for the 11th Presidential Culture Awards opened yesterday, with this year’s theme being “Shine the World, Light of Freedom,” the General Association of Chinese Culture said.
The awards’ five categories are arts and culture, community building, humanitarian dedication, creativity and innovation, and public advocacy, the association said.
Taiwan’s culture has continued to be passed down and innovated on based on the foundation of its democracy and freedom, Vice President William Lai (賴清德) told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Visual designer Lu Yi-xuan delivers a speech at the opening ceremony of the 11th Presidential Culture Awards in Taipei yesterday.
Taiwanese rescuers were trying on Monday to retrieve the last body of a passenger from wreckage of a deadly train crash last week, as the government said five of the eight carriages had now been removed.