Work in the legislature will likely be delayed for the next two weeks, with the pan-blue party caucuses saying they will ask their legislators to focus on "helping" with the recount.
The recount starts today, and the pan-blue camp parties have asked their legislators who serve as conveners for legislative committees to suspend the committee sessions so that pan-blue legislators can return to their constituencies to help lawyers recount votes from the presidential election.
"We have asked the pan-blue conveners to suspend committee sessions and arrange for public hearings and investigation trips instead so that the legislators can return to their constituencies to help with the recount," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Liao Feng-te (
Liao said that the KMT had assigned each city and county to a regional legislator, and legislators-at-large would help out with other affairs.
"We still do not give up the hope that the recount will overturn the result," KMT policy committee convener Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) said.
The KMT caucus also said that it would wait until after the recount to decide whether to question the new Cabinet.
The Legislative Yuan is supposed to question all members of the new Cabinet, but the legislative session is slated to finish at the end of May, meaning that if the opposition parties insist on subjecting members to questioning, the session would need to be extended.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus criticized the KMT suspension of legislative work, and urged the pan-blue legislators to leave the recount to the judiciary.
"Pan-blue legislators should prioritize the legislative work, but so far in this session the Legislative Yuan has passed only a little over 20 bills, which might be a record low. The pan-blue legislators are failing the people," DPP caucus director-general Tsai Huang-liang (
"If the pan-blue legislators keep on fantasizing about the possible overturning of the election and cannot focus on legislation, their poor performance may have a negative impact on the pan-blue camp and affect the upcoming legislative election," Tsai said.
Tsai was also optimistic about the result of the recount.
"So far the disputes the pan-blue camp raised are limited to minor flaws in the election's administrative affairs, and these things won't affect the election result. The DPP caucus is quite optimistic about the recount result. It won't change anything," Tsai said.
"We hope that the pan-blue camp can accept the election result after the recount is completed. We should allow everything to return to normal and stop talking about the election dispute," Tsai said.
Meanwhile, DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) pointed out that the budget bill for state-owned enterprises and the 10 key infrastructure projects were still waiting to be reviewed, and there was not much time left for discussion. The legislative debate on the new Cabinet might end up taking just one or two days, Ker said.
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:
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