The Legislative Yuan played host to a mass brawl yesterday after pan-blue lawmakers incensed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) by blocking the speeding up of a raft of reform bills.
Cashing in on their numerical advantage in the legislative, opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) members vetoed a DPP motion to create an extraordinary session to deal with a proposed political donation law (政治獻金法), draft political party law (政黨法) and draft statute regarding the disposition of assets improperly gained by political parties (政黨財產不當取得條例). Yesterday's meeting was the last of the current legislative session that is scheduled to end next Tuesday.
The pan-blue parties also said no to a proposal aimed at moving toward a constitutional revision to halve the 225-seat legislature.
The DPP was eager to advance the agenda because the setting up of a committee to which the reform bills were intended to be referred was unlikely to take place before the end of the legislative session.
Brandishing a camera and snapping pictures of KMT and PFP lawmakers, DPP Legislator Lo Wen-chia (
"The KMT and PFP's denial over the proposed advancement of the bills runs counter to their pledge of solving in the legislature the problem of disputed party assets at an earlier date," Lo said.
"I am therefore taking pictures to witness the moment when the KMT and PFP members revealed their about-face by voting against the DPP proposal," Lo said.
The act, however, upset PFP whip Chou Hsi-wei (
During the fracas, DPP Legislator Wang Shu-hui (王淑慧) pushed KMT Legislator Yu Yueh-hsia (游月霞), who shouted "DPP lawmakers are pigs."
DPP legislative leader Chen Chi-mai (
The KMT and PFP also blocked the ruling party from pushing for a special legislative session to be held after the scheduled recess.
Executive Yuan and DPP caucus leaders had hoped that the Legislative Yuan would have an extra meeting before Lunar New Year to cope with the proposed NT$500 billion special budget as well as to push ahead with the downsizing of the legislature and one piece of financial legislation that has been stuck on the legislative floor for some time.
Pan-blue parties secured 106 votes to deny the DPP proposal, with only 83 lawmakers saying yes. The legislature instead resolved that lawmakers would convene a new session at an earlier date.
The new session will begin three weeks early on Feb. 6.
The DPP whip, however, was firm that the DPP would petition for the extra legislative sitting.
"The Legislative Yuan should round out the tasks that it ought to finish this year before the Lunar New Year and not delay these tasks until next year," Chen said.
After a marathon round of voting in the morning, lawmakers later gave the green light to the liberalization of the production and trading of salt.
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
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
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