Despite the National Assembly's resolve to push for the suspension of the next Assembly elections, the main political parties yesterday continued to nominate candidates so that they are prepared in case the election goes ahead anyway.
The DPP, in fact, completed its nominations, while the People First Party (PFP) made further progress towards that end.
The nominations are being put forward as a precaution in the event that the Assembly does not succeed in the goal mandated by the major party caucuses -- namely, marginalizing the Assembly and cancelling all future elections.
That goal was agreed to following a decision in March by the Grand Council of Justices that invalidated two controversial constitutional amendments made by the Assembly last year, one of which extended its own term by more than two years.
The Council's decision in turn mandated the Central Election Commission to order an election for May 6.
In the DPP's nomination process, incumbents were given priority during a six-hour meeting of the party's Central Executive Committee (CEC) yesterday.
"Nearly 99 percent of incumbents who registered for candidacy were nominated," said DPP secretary-general Yu Shyi-kun. "The nomination is not for winning the election, but for the constitutional reform of abolishing the National Assembly," he said. "Therefore the abolishment of the National Assembly and the ceasing of deputies' functions will be the major platform of our candidates."
The CEC made a number of additional resolutions yesterday to ensure the achievement of those stated purposes.
The resolutions state that the party's candidates should advocate the abolishment of the National Assembly, and if elected should struggle for such a goal. In addition, incumbent deputies should be present at the currently proceeding National Assembly session, and vote according to the decision of the party caucus. If this does not happen, the resolution stated, their nomination will be revoked.
"Those who violate these resolutions should be considered expelled from the party," Yu quoted the CEC resolution as saying.
The DPP has nominated 107 constituency candidates. At the top of the list of 61 at-large candidates -- whose election is to be based on a party proportional representation system -- is former party chairman Yao Chia-wen (
During a PFP meeting yesterday, nominations were finalized for constituencies in six cities and counties, for a total of 14 candidates.
Yesterday's meeting was only the first stage of nomination and will be followed by more meetings, said party spokesman Chin Ching-sheng (
Local media reported yesterday that Hsu Kuo-tai (
"At the meeting we did not discuss the cases of related constituencies. We do not know about Hsu," he said.
"Wang's wife has enrolled for candidacy, but the case is not yet examined," Chin said.
The National Assembly passed a resolution on Saturday asking the Central Election Committee to put off the impending National Assembly election, which is currently scheduled to take place on May 6.
The resolution requested that the election be put off until the fate of the Assembly is made clearer by decisions to be made at the ongoing session.
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,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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