President Chen Shui-bian (
"As the president of this country, I feel obligated to develop a comprehensive plan to overhaul the Constitution. The plan must be presented to the people who will show their views on the issue and pave the way for the birth of a new constitution," he said.
Chen made the remark at a two-day symposium on government reform and the civil service.
A referendum would decide whether the country should implement a new constitution after thorough public debate, Chen said.
The president said establishing a new constitutional was part of four reform goals.
The goals are: reorganizing the structure of government, upgrading the civil-service system, improving administrative efficiency and deepening Taiwan's democratization through a new constitution, he said.
The existing Constitution was adopted during an era with different political and social realities. It was designed for governing 450 million people in China and could hardly be transplanted to any other country with a different history and political reality, Chen said.
Past constitutional changes were piecemeal and were restricted by the circumstances of the time, meaning they cannot meet the practical needs of Taiwan, he said.
When it comes to an extensive overhaul, Chen said, the nation should look at the limits of government powers, the role of central and local governments, lowering the age of people for practising citizenship and a review based on basic human rights and fundamental national issues.
Han Chung-mo Law Foundation chairman Lee Hung-hsi (
"The constitutional amendment in 2000 made it difficult for the current legislature to initiate and realize constitutional changes," Lee said.
He said that, on their own, neither the pan-blue camp nor the pan-green camp has enough members to amend the constitution. Constitutional amendments must be submitted by one-fourth of lawmakers and obtain approval of three-quarters of lawmakers.
The two-day International Conference on Government Reform and Civil Service System was co-hosted by the Examination Yuan and the law foundation.
Two international experts were invited to deliver keynote speeches at the conference.
Deborah Hensler, a professor of law from Stanford University spoke yesterday on the examination and selection system for legal professionals.
She analyzed strengths and weaknesses of self-regulation, which shapes the legal profession in the US. The profession maintains its independence from government and politics, while self-regulation also encourages professional and ethical behavior, Hensler said.
Udo Bartsch, president of the Federal Academy of Public Administration of Germany's Federal Ministry of the Interior, is slated to speak on the senior civil servant training system today. He will focus on the issues, strategies and experiences in Germany with advanced training in the process of modernizing public administration.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching