[Academy RP] The Taimin Daily News

[Taimin]

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The Taimin Daily News, founded in 1903, is a daily Taiminese-language broadsheet and joint Taiminese- and English-language online media enterprise. Widely regarded as "bitingly neutral," the Daily News focuses on domestic politics and is known for biting and loaded anti-government language, regardless of which party currently holds power.

Lawmakers leave the LegCo building, proposed Health Department plan in hand. (Taimin Daily News)

DEADLOCK IN LEGCO; YUAN SHAN HOSPITAL PROJECT RISKS BEING CHOPPED

A standoff in the Legislative Council over the decennial Department of Health restructuring plan has entered a fourth day, with neither side willing to compromise. Every department and major agency within the Taiminese government is required to issue a policy outline every ten years to the Legislative Council, outlining what their goals and needed resources are. The sticking point regarding this Taimin Health 2030 revolves around the proposed construction of a new hospital in the central Yuan Shan district. While this would normally not be a problem on its own and even normally be an easy pass for the bitterly embattled Council, the Health Department indicated that construction and maintenance costs for the new Yuan Shan General Hospital would run in excess of their current allotted budget, and outlined a proposal to levy a new 5% sales tax on alcohol to raise the needed funds to pay back construction contractors. Members of the Taiminese People's Party, led by Councillor Tsang Lim, expressed their dismay at the use of additional sales taxes. Said Councillor Tsang before the LegCo chambers yesterday, "Simply put, alcohol is the spirit of Taimin. It runs through all of our bloods, and placing this extra fine upon it is a crime against our nature." Others put it more eloquently, such as fellow PP Councillor Hop Su Hong, who stated that "an additional tax on the consumer of a commodity so regularly traded in this city shall only serve to drive the average Taiminese person to poverty." Other People's Partiers, supposed comrades of Tsang Lim and Hop Su Hong, have swung their weight behind the proposed new tax as a form of incentive against alcoholism, working similarly to how taxes on sales of tobacco products have been used by the Health Department for almost four decades. This split in the Council's second-largest party may have dire implications for the future of People's Party seats on the Council, many of which hang in the balance in the upcoming hotly-contested General Election.

 

A solution to the deadlock may be in sight, however. The New Labour Party has circulated a draft amendment to Taimin Health 2030, which would instead shift the burden of the alcohol tax from the consumer to bars, stores and other businesses who purchase alcoholic products from manufacturers to then be later resold. This move, widely seen as a compromise attempt meant to shore up Labour's shaky majority government in the final week before the election, will likely not satisfy hardliners like Tsang and Hop, but will serve mostly to give much-needed good publicity to the NLP before voters go to the polls next Monday. In many ways, it seems that the Taimin Health 2030 plan has fallen victim to election year posturing by the two major parties, both of whom stand a chance of sweeping LegCo ridings in the General. The actual tax issue has been lost in the noise as the fight spiraled into partisan politicking, with each involved party intending to claw their way to a higher exit poll percentage. This coming election is expected to be the tightest race in years, and had the report come to the table a month earlier, it likely would not have faced the same rabid and desperate sparring that it does now and would have passed like every other plan that has come before the LegCo.

Edited November 28, 2019 by Taimin (see edit history)