President Chen Shui-bian (
"Last week, the EU discussed the issue of formulating a new constitution to cope with the increase in its members from 15 countries to 25 next year," Chen said.
"It was a very meaningful communication and, just like the EU, Taiwan needs a new constitution that fits the island's present realities," he said.
Chen made the remarks while receiving a group of German and US legal experts, including the vice president of Germany's Federal Constitutional Court, Winfried Hassemer.
On Wednesday, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweights revealed the president's plan to enact a new Constitution in 2008.
Chen, who is also DPP chairman, said yesterday that his party is doing the preliminary work for a new constitution. He said a compete draft of the new document should be put to a referendum in 2006.
"If all goes well, the new constitution can be put into force May 20, 2008, to coincide with the inauguration of a new president," he said.
After complaints by DPP legislators that the party's constitutional task force didn't contain enough lawmakers, Presidential Office Secretary-General Chiou I-jen (
"Chen proposed creating a new constitution in 2006, and officially putting it into practice in 2008. It is a very natural process because when we decide the new constitution by referendum in 2006, there will still be legal procedures to go through," Chiou said.
"Even if the new constitution is announced in 2007, it cannot be carried out immediately, so we estimate 2008 is about the time when all the procedures will have been finished and the new constitution can come into effect," he said.
Chiou said that DPP legislators such as Shen Fu-hsiung (
He added that Chen had stated clearly that all parties and the entire nation would work on creating the document and that the DPP caucus will be needed to negotiate with other parties.
"The DPP prefers not to take the road of amending the Constitution," Chiou said, adding that over two-thirds of the Constitution would need to be amendment.
Chiou said the current amendment procedure is convoluted and would be criticized by society, making it necessary to decide on a new constitution through a referendum.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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