Premier Yu Shyi-kun called on the public yesterday to support the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) candidates in the year-end legislative elections to allow the DPP to control the legislature and thus help improve the government's efficiency.
Speaking at the inauguration of the campaign office of Wang Shih-shung (王世勛), a DPP legislative candidate for Taichung City,Yu said that many draft bills initiated by the administrative branch for carrying out the nation's development programs and public construction projects are being stockpiled in the Legislative Yuan due to the boycott by the opposition.
The government has always performed with a high degree of efficiency when dealing with matters that are not involved with the legislature and the government's efficiency is reduced with the engagement of the opposition-controlled legislature, Yu said.
More than 200 draft bills initiated by his Cabinet are pending be screening by the legislature, Yu noted, adding that the inefficiency has affected the government's administration.
The legislative elections will be held Dec. 11 with 225 legislators to be elected.
A total of 387 candidates have registered to vie for 168 regional and eight aboriginal seats, of which 92 have been recommended by the DPP.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) nominated 74 candidates, followed by the People First Party (PFP) with 41, the pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) with 30 and the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union (NPSU, 無黨團結聯盟) with 26.
The parties will add additional seats for 41 legislators-at-large and eight overseas Chinese legislators based on a proportional representation of the ballots that each party secures in the election.
Citing survey results carried out by the DPP, Chung Jia-ping, the party's deputy secretary-general, forecast that the "pan-green camp" will be able to win from 110 to 115 seats -- a turnaround from the last legislative elections in 2001.
On the other hand, the pan-blue alliance also claimed that they will keep their majority in the legislature, as the two parties have agreed to cooperate based on a conservative quota system to maximize their seats.
The NPSU, a new party created by 10 independent legislators, is also very optimistic about its performance, predicting that the party will be able to pass the 5 percent threshold to win as many as 17 regional seats and up to three at-large seats.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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