The legislature yesterday concluded the second and final day of a provisional session initiated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus, passing 21 government-restructuring bills that will revamp the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Education, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics, overseas missions and ethical institutions.
To streamline the central government, improve its effectiveness and enhance flexibility within its departments, the government launched a plan to restructure the organization of the Executive Yuan, reducing the current 37 agencies to 29, which will consist of 14 ministries, eight councils, three independent agencies and four additional organizations, over the period from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2014.
The restructuring plans required legislative approval of acts concerning changes to the organization of the affected agencies, but 80 other acts still failed to clear the legislature.
After negotiations, lawmakers decided not to rush the passage of the 80 draft acts on which they disagreed by voting on them, as this would have prolonged the session by another day.
The seventh legislature closed on Dec. 14 to allow lawmakers to focus on the legislative elections last Saturday. The KMT caucus on Tuesday unexpectedly proposed a provisional session, saying that it was urgent to pass the scores of acts to prevent them having to go through the whole legislative process in the new legislature, but only 21 acts were passed.
Amid public concern, lawmakers decided not to vote on an amendment to the Accounting Act (會計法) advocated by Non--Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator Yen Chin-piao (顏清標) in which local elected representatives, such as city or county councilors and borough or village wardens, would be absolved of charges related to the abuse of discretionary funds.
If passed, the amendment would benefit Yen, who has been indicted on charges of embezzlement and the fraudulent acquisition of public money while he served as Tai-chung County Council speaker from October 1998 to December 2000 in a case involving several Taichung politicians who sought to use public funds to reimburse expenses from night clubs.
In related developments, Premier and vice president-elect Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) said yesterday that a new Cabinet would be formed next month.
Vice Premier Sean Chen was widely expected by local media to be named as Wu’s successor, while Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) was rumored to be tapped as the vice premier.
Declining to comment on the reported appointments, Wu said he “was not informed.”
“I cannot comment publicly on that before the president has made a final decision,” he said. “It’s the role of the president to appoint a premier.”
The oath of office for the eight legislature will be taken on Feb. 1. The legislature’s question-and--answer session for the new premier’s policy address could be set for Feb. 17, pending a decision by new lawmakers.
“The new Cabinet will definitely be in place before the session begins,” Wu said.
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
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