Services Struggle

With the new legislative session slated to begin, the KMT and DPP struggle over the services pact. The situation is the same as it usually is -- the DPP wants the bill to be reviewed piece by piece, the KMT wants it up for a vote as a single package. The pact was actually passed last June but no date of implementation was set, meaning that the legislature can still prevent it from coming into force. ECFA, despite all the promises from the neoliberal crowd, has been a colossal failure for all but the rich and for organized crime; ordinary people have seen little or nothing. This has only increased suspicion of the services pact. If it comes into force soon, and has the same effect that ECFA has had, then it will negatively impact the KMT's 2016 election prospects.....
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Daily Links:

• Phils Prez sounds alarm on Chinese expansionism
• In an election in which the KMT might be vulnerable, we don't need the pan-Greens to splinter.
• James Wang on the abuse of the Cairo Declaration by the ROC: "In the days of court diplomacy, it was said that the job of the diplomat was to tell fibs to foreigners in the interest of his country. Under President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has turned this principle on its head, lying to its own people in the interest of a hostile nation."
• Fagan frees a kingfisher.
• Battle of Fisherman's Wharf on the unknown airports of Taipei and other cool stuff.
• 2014 Sony World Photography awards

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