The legislative caucus of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will hold a meeting Wednesday to discuss its ticket for the new Legislative Yuan's speaker and deputy speaker elections, acting DPP Chairman Ker Chien-ming (
The new legislature will begin Feb. 1 when all the 225 newly sworn-in lawmakers will also elect among themselves a speaker and deputy speaker.
Ker said he is consulting leading figures of various DPP factions to seek their opinions about the party's candidates for the two top legislative posts.
"We hope to reach an intraparty consensus on the ticket through consultations. Otherwise, the DPP caucus will hold a primary vote to decide on the ticket," Ker said.
Theoretically, Ker said, incumbent DPP Secretary-General Chang Chun-hsiung (
As to the candidate for deputy speaker, Ker said a primary vote by all caucus members may have to be held.
The DPP, which will have 89 seats in the new legislature, originally hoped to forge a working partnership with the opposition People First Party (PFP), which controls 34 seats, to facilitate the implementation of its reform agenda.
Some DPP lawmakers previously proposed a DPP-PFP ticket for the speaker and deputy speaker elections. However, the hope for a DPP-PFP coalition has dimmed after the PFP caucus announced that it will cooperate with its traditional pan-blue ally of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), who has 79 seats in the new legislature in the speaker and deputy speaker elections.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift