Pan-blue lawmakers dealt the government another setback yesterday by voting to dismiss the legislative meeting and thus reject any review of the long-stalled arms procurement budget.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government's arms procurement bill was originally scheduled to be reviewed yesterday, and a decision made on whether it should be submitted to the National Defense Committee for further discussion.
However, lawmakers from the pan-blue alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) joined forces with eight independent lawmakers to take advantage of their slim majority to disappoint the combined forces of the DPP and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) lawmakers.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
As a result of yesterday's dismissal, lawmakers will now meet on Dec. 27 to discuss whether to reschedule the procurement budget.
After being rejected a total of 41 times, the procurement budget was finally scheduled for discussion on the legislative floor after DPP and TSU lawmakers took advantage of their KMT and PFP counterparts' tardiness in Tuesday's Prodecure Committee meeting and voted the bill onto the legislative agenda.
Exasperated by what they called a "surprise attack," KMT and PFP lawmakers vowed they would do whatever it takes to continue the boycott.
To ensure that independent lawmakers would support the pan-blue camp's goal of boycotting the budget, KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Apart from Chen Chin-ting (
Lawmakers from the Independent Solidarity Union were invited to lunch by PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) yesterday afternoon.
"We feel that such an important issue should be reviewed and discussed carefully before it hits the legislative floor. That is all," said KMT Legislator Tseng Yung-chuan (
Saying that he would stay neutral during the bickering, Wang, a KMT member, added that he was merely doing his job.
"I am the head of the legislature and I must respect the decisions of my fellow lawmakers," Wang said.
In response to the pan-blue camp's continued boycotting of the procurement budget, Cabinet Secretary-General and Spokesman Cho Jung-tai (
"This concerns national security and the Taiwanese people are looking forward to the legislature's approval of it. The pan-blue camp's decision has really upset us," Cho said.
Commenting on proceedings while lunching with a group of presidential advisers at the Presidential Office, President Chen Shui-bian (
Saying the most serious challenge for Taiwan now is "national identity," Chen stressed that people need to be aware of who the enemy is, then they can work together to form a society that supports national defense.
Additional reporting by Chiu Yu-tzu
Also see story:
General says most people want arms bill in legislature
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has