Voting is a civil right, not a duty, Minister of the Interior Yu Cheng-hsien (余政憲) said yesterday at a legislative committee meeting.
Yu was responding to a question by DPP Legislator Tsai Huang-lang (
Yu said voting is basically a right that is enshrined in the country's Constitution, not a duty.
Nevertheless, Yu said, he does not oppose discussing the issue if legislators come up with a relevant bill.
Touching on the problems regarding absentee voting, Yu said that, if the legislature passes the relevant legislation, the Ministry of the Interior will certainly implement it.
The Legislative Yuan's Interior Affairs Committee began to screen an absentee-vote draft bill yesterday. But lawmakers from different parties remain divided over the issue.
Speaking at the session, opposition KMT Legislator Apollo Chen (陳學聖) said absentee voting involves many complicated problems and could have a profound impact on domestic political development.
"Therefore, we must exercise caution and prudence in enforcing the bill," Chen said.
"We might start by allowing citizens living in the country to enjoy the right of absentee voting and then gradually extend the right to those staying abroad," he suggested.
In his view, Chen went on, absentee voting can be experimented with in the year-end mayoral elections in Taipei and Kaohsiung, the nation's two largest cities.
In response, Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairman Huang Shih-cheng (
During the session, DPP Legislator Chou Po-lun (周伯倫) suggested that the CEC should set up an ad hoc committee for inter-party consultations on the redrawing of constituencies for future legislative elections -- as part of the much-anticipated legislative reforms.
Huang agreed to Chou's proposal, saying that the CEC will do its utmost to help forge an inter-party consensus on constituency redrawing -- and to satisfy the demand of large and small parties alike.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift