Allowing for popular referendums on future constitutional amendments is a way to block moves toward Taiwan's independence, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday.
Ma made the remarks in response to claims by Democratic Action Alliance (DAA) activists that inclusion of the right to referendums into the Constitution would promote independence.
Inclusion of the right to referendums in the Constitution is one of the items in the reform package passed by the legislature last August that the 300 delegates of the National Assembly will be charged with approving or rejecting. The National Assembly election will be held today, with 12 political parties and civic groups running in the elections.
Dismissing the activists' claims, Ma said that allowing for referendums on constitutional amendments would make proposals aimed at promoting Taiwan independence or changing the Republic of China's status quo harder to pass.
When the National Assembly is formally disbanded -- another one of the items in the constitutional reform package -- any proposed constitutional amendments redefining the nation's territory or the ROC's formal designation to contain the word "Taiwan" will first have to be passed by the Legislative Yuan and then approved by the Taiwanese people through a referendum, Ma said, adding that this will make changing the status quo more difficult.
Meanwhile, Ma continued to urge the public to come out to vote for today's National Assembly election.
Other items in the constitutional reform package that the National Assembly delegates will deal with include reducing the number of legislative seats from the present 225 to 113, and adopting a "single seat, two votes" legislative electoral system starting with the legislature to be elected in 2007.
The 300 delegate seats for the National Assembly will be allotted to the 12 parties and groups based on the proportion of votes they garner in the election.
DAA convenor Chang Ya-chung (張亞中), a political science professor at National Taiwan University, said that there was no "rational debates or discussions" before the constitutional and electoral reform package was passed by the legislature last year.
If the package is passed by the National Assembly, it will be disastrous for the nation and the people, Chang claimed, adding that inclusion of the right to referendums in the Constitution would lead to de facto independence.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater