A leader of the opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) said yesterday that the party will present a bill to the legislature today to cut the number of Legislative Yuan members from 225 to 113.
Chen Chien-ming (
Bills to amend the Constitution require the signatures of at least 25 percent of the legislature, or 56 legislators.
Chen admitted that the prospects for the bill are uncertain because it will have to be forwarded to the constitutional amendment committee of the Legislative Yuan for review.
Even if the bill is approved by the committee, it will still require the approval of more than 75 percent of the legislators present at a plenary session of the Legislative Yuan, which itself would require the participation of more than 75 percent of the legislature.
Once it is approved by the legislature, the bill will be sent to the National Assembly for approval.
As the opposition KMT and PFP are reluctant to cooperate with the TSU, Chen said he was not optimistic about the bill's prospects in the immediate future. The KMT and the PFP control around half of the 225 seats in the Legislative Yuan.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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