With the National Assembly election approaching, the Nuke-4 Referendum Initiative Association (Nuke-4 RIA,
The group also called on the legislature to pass the law governing the National Assembly's exercise of power (
The legislature is deadlocked over the bill, while the election is slated for Saturday. The law would detail how the assembly should carry out its duties.
About 20 members of the Nuke-4 RIA circumambulated the legislative compound before staging a peaceful sit-in in front of the Chinan Church next to the legislature. The event is scheduled to conclude at 3am Saturday.
Chief executive of the association Iap Phok-bun (
"Reform should not be a slogan but should be real actions," he said. "We'd like to see politicians keep the promises they made four years ago and take advantage of the golden opportunity to conduct reform of the legislature."
Iap said that he would like to see Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) wield his power to help pass the law governing the National Assembly's exercise of power before Saturday's election.
Since the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and the People First Party (PFP) have changed their position on the constitutional amendment, Iap called on the electorate to support the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which are in favor of the constitutional amendment package passed by the legislature last August, and abandon those political parties reneging on their pledges.
Office director of the association Wu Chien-kuo (
"We are for the constitutional reform because it is the consensus of the ruling and opposition parties," he said.
"There is no need for us to debate the issue with anyone because we are not the one who passed the constitutional amendment package nor a political party or private group participating in the upcoming election," Wu said.
Echoing Wu's opinion, Iap said that the group is apparently barking up the wrong tree and should instead challenge the DPP and KMT.
Wu and Iap made the remarks in response to the request made by the Democratic Action Alliance (
The alliance nominated 150 candidates for the Assembly election and has vowed to veto the constitutional amendment package.
Chanting "oppose money monopoly, oppose party monopoly" and holding placards reading "oppose populism, hold rational constitutional debate" and "people vs. party," about 10 alliance members challenged the founder of the Nuke-4 Referendum Initiative Association and former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (
Alliance convenor Chang Ya-chung (
Halving the number of seats in the legislature and adopting the "single-member district, two-vote" system for legislative elections would not solve the inefficiency problem of the legislature, he said.
"When a person suffers from bad health, it does not necessarily help the person regain his health by simply losing weight," he said.
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,