The Ministry of the Interior will work out its draft revisions to an election law soon to pave the way for the implementation of a "single-member district, two votes" electoral system, an ministry official said yesterday.
Lin Ching-chi (林清淇), deputy director of the ministry's Department of Civil Affairs, said during a seminar hosted by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) that the ministry plans to submit its draft revisions to the Public Officials Election and Recall Law (公職人員選舉罷免法) to the Cabinet next month.
Once the Cabinet approves the draft, it would be sent to the Legislative Yuan for review in the next legislative session set to start in September, he said.
The National Assembly on Tuesday passed constitutional amendment package under which the number of legislative seats will be reduced to 113 and a "single-member district, two votes" system will be adopted starting with the next legislature to be elected in 2007.
While 73 seats will be elected from regional districts, there will be six seats for Aborigines and 34 seats for at-large and overseas representatives. The regional seats will be distributed among special municipalities, counties and cities according to their populations, with each enjoying at least one seat and one legislator elected from each district.
The at-large and overseas seats will be allocated to political parties that win at least 5 percent of the votes, according to the proportion of votes they garner.
The Central Election Commission said that it will maintain the integrity of administrative regions while re-demarcating the constituencies in line with the new electoral system.
Meanwhile, Lai said an organic law should be enacted to ensure the commission's impartiality. According to Lai, the commission members should be appointed by proportional representation, and a constituency demarcation review committee should be set up under the commission to protect its independence and objectivity.
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