The Presidential Office will set up a special task force to review the steps, method and strategy to promote a second phase of constitutional reforms, a top presidential aide said yesterday.
Presidential Office Secretary-General Yu Shyi-kun said the review will be completed in a week and that the task force will consult public opinion before deciding upon whether a cross-party constitutional reform committee should be established to facilitate the reforms.
According to Yu, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) is very happy about the successful passage of a constitutional amendment package made by the National Assembly earlier this week, which has made possible a second phase of reforms.
Yu said it remains the government's goal to upgrade the country's competitiveness through the reforms and to have a new constitution implemented in 2008 together with the inauguration of the new president, legislature and administration.
Issues to be addressed in the second phase of reforms will include the introduction of a voluntary military service system, civil rights, labor rights and human rights protection, as well as the enhancement of welfare for the country's Aboriginal population.
The National Assembly passed on Tuesday a constitutional amendment package to scrap the assembly to make way for popular referendums on future constitutional amendments, reduce the number of legislative seats from the present 225 to 113 and to adopt a "single seat, two votes" electoral system starting with the seventh legislature to be elected in 2007. Officials have promised that the next phase of reforms will not involve sensitive issues such as changes to the country's sovereignty or territorial boundaries.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods