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Ma insistent on service trade pact passing: report
ACT NOW, THINK LATER? The emergency clause of the pact allows controversial parts to be renegotiated with China at a later date, Ma was cited as saying at a meeting
By Lin Mei-fen and Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter, with staff writer and CNA
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that he hoped the most controversial parts of the cross-strait service trade agreement could be “renegotiated with China later,” allowing the pact to be passed by the Legislative Yuan first.
General Chamber of Commerce director-general Lai Cheng-yi (賴正鎰) reported Ma’s comments at the Presidential Office yesterday morning in a meeting with the nonprofit organization’s board of directors and supervisors.
“Letting the agreement continue to stall in the legislature risks not only affecting our ties with China, but also creating a psychological barrier for other countries when they want to sign a treaty with us,” Ma was quoted as saying.
Ma said that a majority of the agreement’s service subsectors were supportive of the treaty, and therefore he hoped the agreement could be brought into force first, leaving the parts relating to skeptical subsectors up for renegotiation in accordance with Article 8 and Article 11 of the agreement, Lai said.
“In addition to strictly overseeing the follow-up negotiations, the government plans to allocate NT$98.2 billion (US$3.26 billion) in assistance and counseling services to the industries that would bear the brunt of the impacts,” Lai quoted Ma as saying.
Ma was cited as saying that the agreement would pave the way for Taiwan to participate in the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which were vital to boosting exports.
Turning to an earlier consensus reached by all-party lawmakers to carry out an item-by-item review of the treaty, Ma said that while the legislature was entitled to make amendments, doing so would almost certainly void the accord.
With regard to the “back-room deal” label attached to the treaty by its opponents, Ma was quoted as saying this was inappropriate, given that a total of 110 consultative meetings were held by the Ministry of Economic Affairs with industrial representatives before the pact was signed in June last year.
Twenty public hearings were organized by the legislature afterwards, he added.
Ma proposed a meeting with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairperson-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to discuss economic policies, Lai said.
“Hopefully, we will be able to reach a consensus [on the handling of the agreement]. After all, the accord concerns each and every Taiwanese, not just the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT],” Lai cited Ma as saying.
source: Taipei Times
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