Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (連戰) will meet the party's National Assembly delegates tomorrow to give them moral support and demonstrate the party's determination to pursue constitutional reforms, according to Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權), executive director of the KMT's central policy coordination committee.
The president of the National Assembly has decided to allow for representatives of each political party to explain their respective positions concerning constitutional amendments tomorrow.
On Tuesday, the assembly will vote on the package of constitutional amendment proposals passed by the legislature last August, which include reducing the number of seats in the legislature from 225 to 113, extending the tenure of legislators from three years to four years, adopting a "single seat, two ballots" legislative electoral system, phasing out the National Assembly to allow for popular referendums on future constitutional amendments, and empowering the Council of Grand Justices to screen presidential and vice presidential impeachment proposals.
Both the Democratic Progressive Party and the KMT are in favor of the package of amendment proposals. However, the package can only be approved if they are supported by three-quarters of the total delegates.
The DPP won the lion's share of the votes in the May 14 National Assembly election, gaining 42.52 percent of the ballots, or 127 out of the total 300 seats, while the KMT garnered 38.92 percent of the votes, or 117 seats. Three other pro-reform parties won another five seats.
Altogether, the pro-reform parties have gained 249 seats in the National Assembly.
The KMT will mobilize its senior officials Wednesday to "supervise" the voting process of its party members to ensure that they vote along party lines, Tseng said.
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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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