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Ma criticized for
rushing service pact
SLOW DOWN: A civic group and lawmakers spurned
the president’s call to accelerate public hearings on the deal, saying that an
issue that affects so many requires time
By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Activists and legislators yesterday panned President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) call
to speed up the public hearings being held on the cross-strait service trade
agreement, saying that the government and the public should take their time
examining the potential impact the pact may have on the nation.
Although Ma blamed the legislature for stalling the agreement’s passage by being
slow in organizing the hearings, the slow pace of progress is due to government
agencies’ reluctance to provide the information that needs to be discussed at
the hearings, the Democratic Front Against Cross-Strait Trade in Services
Agreement said in a press release.
At a public hearing last month — the ninth of 16 scheduled hearings — the
Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Council for Economic Planning and
Development refused to provide an estimate of the number of jobs each sector
that would be opened up to China may lose after the pact takes effect, alliance
spokesperson Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said.
Lai said the hearings are designed to gather the opinions of all sectors of
society and should follow standard procedures because the service trade
agreement affects the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Taiwanese workers.
Civic groups do not want things to be rushed by doing what Chinese Nationalist
Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠) did and organize eight hearings
in four days, he added.
The transparency of the service trade agreement, which was signed in June, and
the yet to be inked cross-strait trade in goods agreement, which recently
completed its seventh round of bilateral negotiations, remain highly
questionable, Lai said.
For example, the government has yet to provide the public with a comparison
table between the UN Provisional Central Product Classification (聯合國中央產品分類暫行版),
the Standard Industrial Classification of the Republic of China (中華民國行業分類標準) and
the Company Operation Item Code Table (公司行號營業項目代碼表) that people need to check
whether the sector they work in is to be opened to Chinese investors under the
pact, he added.
Furthermore, the public has not been informed of the most recent round of
negotiations over the trade in goods agreement, Lai said.
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