Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
Legislator Jao Yung-ching (
Jao said the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus is tilting toward lumping the government budget proposal together with the NCC bill, adding that the KMT will see if the NCC bill can be passed before they decide on the budget proposal.
While both the DPP and the opposition agree that it is necessary to set up an institution like the NCC, they disagree on the make-up of the body.
The pan-blue alliance of the KMT and the People First Party (PFP), which holds a slim majority in the 225-seat legislature, has proposed that the NCC be comprised of members in proportion to the number of seats each party holds in the legislature, while the DPP insists that political parties should keep their hands off and let experts and scholars serve on the commission, so that press freedom will not be affected.
Although the DPP claims that such a proportional system is unprecedented, the pan-blue alliance has said that there are precedents in other democracies to appoint NCC members in proportion to the parliamentary strength of the political parties.
For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the US is normally staffed according to the proportional representation principle, they claim.
In fact, the FCC is comprised of five commissioners appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Only three of the commissioners can be from the same political party.
Meanwhile, DPP caucus whip Chen Chin-jun (
Chen told reporters that the highest degree of mobilization within the DPP caucus will be necessary because the opposition might put the NCC bill to a vote any time, as the four-month negotiation between the DPP and the opposition is coming to an end.
The NCC bill has been one of the major contentions in the legislature between the DPP and the opposition, which holds a slight legislative majority.
When the previous legislature was closing its final session in late January, the DPP legislative caucus managed to block the passage of the bill through various obstructive methods, including filibustering and barring KMT and PFP legislators from using the rostrum.
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
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