The Cabinet yesterday made a last-ditch appeal to opposition lawmakers to put aside political interests and respect the constitutional system ahead of today's vote on its request to overturn a controversial statute authorizing the formation of a committee to investigate the March 19 shootings.
"We're calling on opposition parties to respect the scientific investigation conducted by forensic expert Henry Lee (李昌鈺) and stop making erroneous accusations," Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) told a press conference yesterday morning.
According to Lee's investigation report, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) suffered a bullet wound across his abdomen.
Lee also said that the possibility that the wound had been self-inflicted or that the shooting had been staged was minimal.
Opposition parties have said the shooting might have been a political scheme to help boost the president's chances of re-election.
Using its numerical advantage, the opposition pushed through a statute on Aug. 24 to create a special committee to investigate the shooting of Chen and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮).
With the president's approval, the Cabinet, which says the statute violates the Constitution and encroaches on the judicial system, filed a request to the legislature on Sept. 3, asking it to reconsider the controversial legislation.
After receiving a Cabinet request, the legislature is required by the Constitution to convene within seven days and must make a decision within 15 days of the request.
The Non-Partisan Solidarity Union (NPSU) caucus has made it clear that it will cast five of its 11 votes against the Cabinet's request and five for it.
The remaining member will draw lots to determine his or her vote.
To override the Cabinet's veto, at least 109 lawmakers -- a simple majority of the 217 occupied seats in the 225-seat legislature that are presently filled -- have to vote in favor of the statute.
Together, the opposition caucuses have 112 lawmakers, but two KMT lawmakers are currently fugitives, and others may rebel against the party whip.
With five votes from the NPSU, the pan-blue alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) will probably succeed in rejecting the Cabinet's request and begin the committee's formation.
If the Cabinet's request is rejected, the statute will be sent back to the executive branch, where it must be signed into law by the president.
As the DPP does not enjoy a majority in the legislature, Chen Chi-mai said that the government was "neither pessimistic nor optimistic" about winning today's vote.
"While we'll do whatever we can to persuade opposition lawmakers to endorse our veto motion, we'll respect their final decision and do everything in accordance with the law," he said.
However, should the legislature reject the Cabinet's request, Chen Chi-mai said the Cabinet would also respect the DPP caucus' decision to file for an interpretation from the Council of Grand Justices on the constitutionality of the statute.
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
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
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
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: