The legislative caucus of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will file for a Council of Grand Justices judgment on the constitutionality of the legislature's refusal to screen a Control Yuan nomination list, DPP caucus whip Lai Ching-te (賴清德) said yesterday.
"The application will be filed on Thursday," Lai said, adding that the Council of Grand Justices will be asked to judge whether the opposition-controlled Legislative Procedure Committee may block a bill from being placed on the legislative agenda without supplying any "legitimate" reasons.
President Chen Shui-bian (
The list has so far not been discussed at the legislative floor because the Legislative Procedure Committee has refused to put it on the legislative agenda.
Lai said the legislature's powers should rest in its plenary session, not any auxiliary committees like the Procedure Committee.
If the Procedure Committee is allowed to "randomly" block a bill from being put on the legislative agenda, Lai said, it is tantamount to allowing the committee to usurp the powers and functions of the legislative plenary session.
"By refusing to put a bill on the legislative work agenda, the Procedure Committee has actually deprived legislators who do not sit on the Procedure Committee of the right to exchange their views about the bill at the legislative plenary session," Lai said.
Lai added that such a practice would lead to the manipulation of legislative operations by a few lawmakers and eventually result in an erosion of the power of the legislature.
Because of the opposition-controlled legislature's boycott, the Control Yuan has been moribund since the six-year tenure of the previous Control Yuan members expired on Jan. 31.
Without new ombudsmen, Lai said the public cannot receive timely assistance from the Control Yuan when they file petitions.
According to Lai, the Control Yuan has received more than 4,000 appeals in the past four months, but no ombudsmen are available to handle them, undermining the rights of the people.
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
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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