Pact concession offered to Taiwan students
Print Edition
A SENIOR politician yesterday offered concessions to student protesters who have occupied Taiwan’s legislative body for almost three weeks, urging them to end their occupation.
The Sunflower protest movement took over the chamber on March 18 in protest at a trade pact between Taiwan and China’s mainland. The dispute has sparked huge rallies in Taipei, the island’s capital.
Wang Jin-pyng, speaker of Taiwan’s legislative body, entered the chamber yesterday surrounded by dozens of legislators from both ruling and opposition parties, shaking hands with students, but did not speak directly with protest leaders.
Before the meeting, he said he would not field any more debate in the legislative body over the trade pact before a law had been brought in to monitor agreements with the Chinese mainland — one of the protesters’ key demands.
“I hereby guarantee not to mediate any negotiations between the ruling and opposition parties for a legislative session to debate the service trade agreement, before a law is introduced,” Wang said, reading from a statement.
Wang, of the ruling Kuomintang party, called on the students to give the main chamber back to legislators.
Acknowledging the “goodwill” of Wang’s move, student leader Lin Fei-fan said the protest group would discuss Wang’s appeal for a retreat from the chamber.
Around 200 student-led demonstrators had initially occupied the chamber — the first such seizure in Taiwan’s history — swiftly drawing a large crowd of supporters, with more than 10,000 congregated outside the building at one point.
On March 30, tens of thousands of protesters gathered to pressure Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou to retract the trade pact, which they say will “damage” Taiwan’s economy.
The pact is designed to open up further trade in services between the mainland and Taiwan.
Ma has warned that failure to ratify the pact would be a grave setback to trade-reliant Taiwan’s efforts to seek more free trade agreements and avoid isolation as regional economic blocs emerge.
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