Lisa Huang (
"Since `non-partisan' means not sharing common political ideology, the public might become confused if such a name is permitted to be registered, as the name and the group's mission do not support one another," said Huang, who is an attorney.
Independent Legislator Su Ying-kuei (
"I was in a taxi today and the cab driver asked me if I was a member of NSU. It seems the public is perplexed about the group," Su said.
The NSU was formed yesterday when Chang Po-ya (
The NSU's membership so far includes nine other members: independent Legislators Yen Chin-piao (顏清標), Tsai Hao (蔡豪), May Chin (高金素梅), Walis Pelin (瓦歷斯貝林) and Chen Chin-ding (陳進丁); former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Lin Pin-kun (林炳坤), Lu Shin-ming (呂新民); former People First Party (PFP) legislator Chiu Chuang-liang (邱創良); and former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Cheng Yu-cheng (鄭余鎮).
Huang cited the Social Groups Registration Regulation (
"According to this regulation, if a group's name, purpose and mission are not in accordance with one another, then the group's registration does not meet the stipulated procedural requirements," Huang said.
Huang also stated that the NSU is not in position to represent the majority of Taiwanese people who are not registered members of any political party.
"According to statistics, the total number of registered members of political parties comes to about 1.7 million, which is a small proportion of the population. Therefore, the NSU cannot be representative of all the rest," Huang said.
In response, the ministry's Department of Civil Affairs, which is in charge of political party registrations, stated that the ministry respects people's freedom of choice when it comes to selecting party names.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay