Opposition lawmakers yesterday blocked a DPP attempt to make the enactment of a referendum law a priority issue on the legislative agenda.
The opposition fears that a plan to hold a referendum during the year-end legislative race has become a DPP tactic to drag out the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Legislative Yuan speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), who hosted yesterday's inter-party negotiations, said the opposition unanimously concluded that the law should follow due legislative process like any other, which means that substantive negotiations should be conducted before it is submitted to the legislature for final consideration.
"We are not going to single out the referendum law. All pieces of legislation get equal treatment. A bill can move on to the legislature when negotiations are complete," Wang said.
Following the Executive Yuan's announcement on Wednesday to resume the plant's construction, the opposition yesterday reopened the door to negotiations with the DPP, and the two parties held their first round of dialogue in more than three months.
The main purpose of yesterday's discussion was to arrange the agenda for the first meeting of the session on Feb. 20, when Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) will give the Cabinet's biannual policy address to the legislature. The legislature had refused to let Chang make the address last October, in protest over the Cabinet's decision to scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant project.
But just as the tensions between the ruling and opposition parties are calming down, the referendum law is triggering a new conflict.
Opposition legislators considered the proposal by convener of the DPP legislative caucus Chou Po-lun (周伯倫) to prioritize the referendum law as a crude attempt to secure the support of anti-nuclear voters in the year-end election.
"We don't wish to see any political party use inter-party negotiations or even the legislature as a theater to vie for the year-end elections," said Hsieh Chi-ta (
A total of eight proposals for the referendum law, raised by different legislators, are now available in the legislature, some of which have finished a preliminary review. The Executive Yuan has so far not submitted any proposal to the legislature.
The opposition insisted that the referendum law should not be linked to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant project, saying that otherwise political instability would continue.
"The referendum law should only apply to a public policy that has not been implemented. A project that is already underway, such as the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, cannot be scrapped arbitrarily," KMT caucus whip Cheng Yung-chin (
Shen Chih-Hwei (沈智慧), deputy convener of the People First Party caucus, said the DPP should stop arguing about the power plant and focus its strength on revitalizing the nation's economy and improving the unemployment situation.
"With the dispute over the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant just concluded, [the DPP] is now trying other ways to ... provoke combat. We don't want to see this happen, nor do the people," Shen said.
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
RSS