President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday agreed to allow the legislature to review the controversial Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) clause by clause, but insisted that the trade pact should be voted on as a whole.
Presidential Office Spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said Ma had reached a consensus with Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) during a weekly lunch at the Presidential Office yesterday.
Lo said the five KMT heavyweights exchanged opinions on the bills that the legislature intends to deal with during a provisional legislative session, which is likely to begin on Aug. 16.
The bills include the ECFA, an agreement on intellectual property rights protection, and amendments to the University Act (大學法) and the Vocational School Act (專科學校法) that would allow Taiwanese schools to accept Chinese students, the Local Government Act (地制法) and the second-generation national health insurance program.
On the review of the ECFA, Lo said all the participants agreed that the legislature should proceed following four main principles: Wu would report to the legislature and answer legislators’ questions; the legislature would review the agreement clause by clause; the accord must be voted on in its entirety; and the legislature could attach a rider to the agreement if necessary.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the KMT have yet to resolve the controversy over how to review the ECFA during the provisional session.
The DPP caucus has said the agreement should be screened clause by clause, with votes on every article. However, the KMT caucus says the legislature does not have the power to unilaterally alter the agreement and can only endorse or reject it as a whole.
The legislature held its first extraordinary legislative session last month, but KMT and DPP lawmakers scuffled after disagreeing on whether the ECFA should be reviewed clause by clause. The clashes left one KMT legislator bleeding, while a DPP lawmaker suffered a broken rib.
The DPP later withdrew from the session after the KMT majority upheld an announcement by Wang that the ECFA and the cross-strait copyright protection agreement would skip a preliminary review.
During last month’s special session, the KMT caucus also resolved not to invite the premier to brief the legislature and answer lawmakers’ questions regarding the ECFA.
DPP spokesperson Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) said the opposition remained dissatisfied with the president’s decision.
He said the DPP would not give up on its demand that lawmakers be given the authority to initiate a clause-by-clause vote on the agreement.
“If the ECFA brings as many benefits as the government claims, what’s stopping them from agreeing to our request?” Tsai said. “What’s so special about it that we still can’t properly review this agreement?”
Additional reporting by Vincent Y. Chao
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.
RSS