Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that he did not feel any need to amend the Constitution to give the legislature 200 seats and adopt a Cabinet system instead of a presidential system, as Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) has suggested.
During a Legislative Yuan seminar, Wang called for public debate on the merits of a German-style Cabinet system, as had been proposed by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator You Ching (尤清).
Wang also suggested the legislature have 200 seats, instead of being reduced to 113, as will occur after next year's legislative elections.
"As long as these ideas are good for national development and good for the legislature, we should support them. We should not shoot them down simply because they are proposed by the DPP, just as we should not fire at shadows as soon as they appear," Wang said.
He said 113 seats were "absolutely too few" for a country with a population of almost 23 million. He also urged the KMT and other opposition lawmakers to make an effort to understand and evaluate the DPP's proposals, which he said had yet to be finalized.
Implementing the ideas would require that the Constitution be amended.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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