The pan-blue dominated Procedure Committee yesterday rejected the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus' proposal to invite President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to deliver a state of the nation address to the legislature.
The proposed report would focus on the arms procurement bill.
The committee also refused for the 33rd time to place the arms procurement plan on the legislative agenda, as well as the list of Chen's nominees for the Control Yuan.
PHOTO: LUO PEI-TEH, TAIPEI TIMES
DPP caucus whip William Lai (
"To disallow the president to address the legislature is a show of disrespect for the president and a violation of the president's constitutional right," Lai said.
Citing Article 4 of the Organization Act of the Legislature's Procedure Committee (
He also said People First Party (PFP) caucus whip Hwang Yih-jiau (
Lai was referring to a dispute that took place at the committee at noon.
DPP Legislator and committee member Wang To-Far (
"Remember, what you say and do today here will go into the history books," he said.
DPP Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (
To show his support for Cheng, DPP Legislator Wu Bing-ray (吳秉叡) said that although he personally opposed amendments to the Law Governing Legislators' Exercise of Power (立法院職權行使法) proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus, he would not propose to delay it.
Pan-blue lawmakers, however, still proposed to block the arms procurement plan and Chen's nominees for the Control Yuan, as well as 16 other bills proposed by the DPP and its ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU).
The two camps then launched into a debate over whether the Procedure Committee has the right to block bills that have completed due procedure.
Realizing that the debate was going nowhere, Hwang and KMT Legislator Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權), who also serves as the executive director of the party's Central Policy Committee, proposed to put the issue to a vote.
The pan-blue dominated committee voted 18 to 12 to stop the discussion and vote on committee members' proposals to defer certain bills.
Stakked bills
Major DPP bills that have been obstructed by the Procedure Committee since the beginning of the sixth legislative term in February
1. Invite President Chen Shio-bian to deliver a state of the nation address focusing on the arms procurement plan: Blocked once
2. Arms procurement plan: Blocked 33 times
3. Amendments to the State-Owned Properties Law (國有財產法): Blocked 17 times
4. Confirmation of President Chen Shui-bian’s nominees for the Control Yuan: Blocked 15 times
5. Amendments to the Referendum Law (公民投票法): Blocked 7 times
6. Bill governing the survey and disposition of assets and properties of political parties and their affiliates: Blocked 7 times
7. Administrative corporation bill (行政法人法): Blocked 7 times
8. Amendments to the Immigration Law (入出國及移民法): Blocked 7 times
9. Homeland restoration act (國土復育條例): Blocked 7 times
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
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
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