As the indefinite hunger strike by former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄) enters its fourth day today, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is to meet with DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) to address Lin’s demands.
The 73-year-old Lin began his hunger strike on Tuesday demanding that the Ma administration respect the will of the people and halt construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮).
Insisting that the decades-long issue should be put to a vote in a referendum in accordance with the Referendum Act (公民投票法), Ma has brushed off suggestions to resolve the crisis, including those proposed by several lawmakers from his own party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The Referendum Act has been dubbed a “birdcage” law that is structurally flawed so that any referendum is doomed to fail, mainly because of its high thresholds.
Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) met with KMT lawmakers at 5pm yesterday to ensure the lawmakers toe the party line, ahead of a meeting of the legislative plenary session today in which the DPP plans to table a statute that would allow a referendum on the plant to be decided by a simple majority vote.
After two-and-a-half hours of discussions, Jiang convinced some KMT lawmakers, who had earlier advised the government to respond positively to the demands made by Lin and the DPP to end Lin’s hunger strike, to change their positions.
The two conclusions reached at the meeting strictly followed what Ma and Jiang proposed.
First, the government will proceed with construction of the plant and ongoing safety checks and tests, but it will not install fuel rods and will not activate the plant until a referendum is held to decide whether it can be put into operation.
Second, all KMT lawmakers are required to attend the legislative meeting today to block the DPP’s plans to pass the special statute, or else they will face party discipline.
Earlier yesterday, KMT Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) told a group of reporters that he was against the idea of putting the issue to a referendum.
Lin said at the time that he would suggest that the legislature pass a resolution allowing the Executive Yuan to announce, without having to hold a referendum, that the construction of the plant will continue to completion and safety checks and tests will be performed, but the plant will not be activated.
KMT Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) had said that the Executive Yuan should announce a halt to the construction of the plant immediately after the legislature adopts a resolution to support its proposed plan to scrap the facility.
KMT lawmakers Alex Tsai (蔡正元), Su Ching-chuan (蘇清泉) and Chiang Hui-chen (江惠貞), among others, who had floated other proposals, did not force their ideas through at the meeting.
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
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS