A majority of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday signed a motion to hold a no-confidence vote against Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) in a move designed to pre-empt an opposition call to topple the Cabinet.
"What has been going on in the legislature is like a really bad play. It's time to pull down the stage, and for all of us to take a bow," DPP Legislator Chen Chin-de (陳金德), who initiated the move, told a press conference yesterday.
The Constitution stipulates that the president may, within 10 days after legislative approval of a no-confidence vote against the premier, dissolve the legislature.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
"The motion is not about boycotting Chang," Cheng said. "As stipulated in the Constitution, toppling the Cabinet would pave the way for a new legislature," Chen said.
At the DPP caucus meeting, 45 of a total of 83 DPP lawmakers signed the proposal, leaving it 26 signatures short of the one-third threshold required to send the motion to the legislature.
Chen urged the People First Party (PFP), which controls 21 seats in the 216-member legislature, to "walk the walk and talk the talk."
The PFP had said after Chang was appointed as premier on May 15 that the party would work with their Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) allies to oust him. However, the pan-blue camp hasn't taken any action since then.
PFP Spokesman Lee Hung-chun (
DPP legislative caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (
Chen said he had made the proposal to root out legislators who had paralyzed the government, enacted legislation in violation of the Constitution and impaired the legislature's dignity.
In related news, Chang yesterday defended his decision to halt construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant project in 2000 during his first premiership.
Chang made the remarks as he briefed the Legislative Yuan on his administrative agenda.
Pan-blue lawmakers held up signs blasting Chang for his decision to suspend the project.
Under tremendous pressure here and abroad because of existing contracts to build the plant, construction was later restarted.
"Building a non-nuclear homeland was a campaign promise made by President Chen Shui-bian [陳水扁]," Chang told the legislature. "As Chen was elected, of course, he had to fulfill his promise."
"Legislative approval is not required to halt the execution of an approved budget," Chang said.
Chang yesterday also called on the legislature to pass this year's central government budget.
The budget, which should have been passed last November as stipulated in the Budget Law (
The opposition parties have demanded that amendments to the Organic Law of the Central Election Commission (
The pan-blue proposal calls for selecting commission members in proportion to the parties' number of seats in the legislature, which would give the pan-blues control of the commission. Members are currently nominated by the premier and appointed by the president.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS