President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday said that he will sign legislation on the National Assembly's operations into law but issue a note indicating his different stance on the ratification threshold for constitutional amendments.
"I'd rather be recalled than violate the Constitution," Chen was quoted as saying by a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) official, who attended a luncheon with the president at the Taipei Guest House yesterday afternoon.
Chen was referring to a remark made by former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (
The president is required to make public the statute within 10 days of its May 20 passage through the Legislative Yuan.
CABINET WON'T GET INVOLVED
Premier Frank Hsieh (
The premier told Lin yesterday morning that the reason for this was that the legislation was not drafted by the government.
He said he would hate to see the assembly face the predicament of not being able to perform its duties if the government opted for such a dramatic measure.
According to the official, yesterday's luncheon turned into an occasion for complaints.
A LITANY OF COMPLAINTS
DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (
"I had my resignation ready on May 14 [the day of the National Assembly elections]," he was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, Vice President Annette Lu (
In addition to asking party members to have faith in the party and to be united, Chen repeated his determination to reconcile with opposition parties.
He also asked DPP members to take advantage of the party's Central Standing Committee meetings as a platform for voicing their ideas.
Chen said that he would also like to see the DPP's three caucus whips participating in the meetings in order to help them keep abreast of party policy.
EXTRA SESSION
The president also said he hoped to see the legislature hold an extraordinary meeting in late July to deal with several outstanding important bills and budgets, including the long-obstructed weapons-procurement bill and the bill confirming his selection of Control Yuan members.
With the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to elect a new chairman in mid-July and "China fever" on the wane, Chen said, there should be "a change in the political climate" by that time.
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:
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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
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