DPP calls for Cabinet reshuffle over economy

She said that Premier Liu Chao-shiuan owes the nation an apology for failing to rescue the economy.

Liu had promised that Taiwan's economy would rebound in the fourth last year; it turned out that it declined 8.36 percent, she noted during a national affairs conference her party co-organized.

The economy is estimated to fall 2.97 percent in 2009, she said, asking whether these failures do not warrant an apology from Liu. DPP lawmakers staged protests and boycotts over Liu's refusal to apologize Friday when the premier was delivering his policy address at the Legislature.

The DPP had extended an invitation to President Ma Ying-jeou to the conference, but Ma declined, saying the DPP's Friday protests showed that his presence at the conference would be meaningless. Instead, he called an economic meeting of government officials on the same day.

Tsai said she had not heard anything about Ma planning to hold such a meeting.

“The Presidential Office chose to hold the meeting today. It feels like they are deliberately competing with the civilian national affairs conference,” Tsai said. She pointed out a seat was still reserved for the president, just in case he would show up.

Finance Minister Lee Su-der, Sean Chen, chairman of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) and Jennifer Wang, chairwoman of the Cabinet-level Council of Labor Affairs (CLA), attended the DPP conference.

Wang said the premier encouraged Cabinet members to take part in the civilian conference, and she had her deputy attend the presidential meeting. The three Cabinet officials said they would take into consideration feasible suggestions from the conference.

During the conference, some speakers claimed that the Ma administration has been ignoring the country's laborers. Liu Chin-hsing, a former adviser for the CLA, said Taiwan has been suffering worse than many other countries in the global economic crisis because the government takes care of only the capitalists but ignores the laborers.

The Ma administration is tilting towards China while sacrificing Taiwan's economic autonomy.

Chang Ching-sen, a former deputy head of the Cabinet's Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), said the Ma administration had underestimated the unemployment problem. It has now realized the gravity of the problem, but it has been able to come up with solutions by only repackaging old plans that cannot really solve the problem, Chang said. Chang described Ma's policies as “absurd.”

He urged the government to reduce wasteful spending, give top priority to helping minorities, and take care of basic needs of the unemployed and low-income groups.

Wu Jong-yi, a former chairman of the Taiwan Stock Exchange, said the government should not put all its eggs into the same basket by overly relying on China for its economic growth.

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