As the campaign for next month's elections heats up, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday appealed to voters with what it called "positive solutions to serious problems in Taiwan" by announcing the 10 bills it vowed to pass into law.
The 10 bills, including the political party law (政黨法), the lobbying bill (遊說法), the administrative zoning law (行政區劃法), the fiscal discipline law (財政紀律法) and the Statute Governing the Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例), will be the KMT caucus' priority, according to the party.
"These 10 bills illustrate that, as the country's biggest oppos-ition party, the KMT does not only criticize the government or ex-pose abuse cases relentlessly, but also works hard to provide positive solutions to the country's problems," KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday, during a press conference to introduce the 10 bills.
Stressing the party's reform efforts, Ma said the political party law and the lobbying bill made a priority of regulating political contributions, lobbying and political parties. The fiscal discipline law, on the other hand, could prevent the government from wasting the country's money or acting corruptly, like he said it was now.
Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) and Taipei county commissioner candidate Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) attended the press conference to promote the administrative zoning law.
There are only two special municipalities in the country: Taipei City and Kaohsiung City. The KMT is promoting the merger of Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung cities and counties, while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is against the idea.
Upon announcing each of the 10 main bills, Ma put a small pack of Chinese medicine into a big pot, a gesture to symbolize that the bills will work as the medicine for what the party called an "ill Taiwan." The party will continue its campaigning efforts and launch its print-version campaign ads today.
Meanwhile, in an attempted response to the KMT's parade that will be held on Nov. 26 to protest the DPP government's recent scandals, the DPP will launch a nationwide march on Nov. 27 to promote its local-elections campaign and denounce the KMT's accusations.
DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday announced the campaign activity, as decided by the central executive committee.
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