President Chen Shui-bian's (
The motion was proposed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and backed by a caucus of independent legislators. People First Party (PFP) caucus whip Lu Hsueh-Chang (
The censure motion said that Chen's intention to abolish the unification council will unilaterally change the cross-strait status quo and expedite the advancement of de jure independence, which would in turn damage the US-Taiwan relationship, imperil the country's security, destroy the country's image, and impair the public's interests.
"Since the president's plan violates the public's wish to maintain the cross-strait status quo, the legislature should approve the censure," KMT caucus whip Pan Wei-kang (
Following the KMT's motion of censure, Lu told a press conference that the PFP didn't think the censure would persuade the president to give up on his plan.
"We have to adopt more concrete actions to oppose the president's plan, rather than just a censure," he said.
The PFP have proposed asking Taiwan's representative to Washington David Lee (李大維) and the National Security Council's Secretary-General Chiou I-ren (邱義仁) to brief the legislature on the affect that the abolition of the unification council would have on US-Taiwan relations.
The KMT's motion of censure and the PFP's proposal are to be discussed in today's Procedure Committee, which is dominated by the pan-blue camp.
If the proposals receive the approval of the procedure committee, the legislature could vote on them as soon as at next Friday's meeting.
Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council Chairman Joseph Wu (
Wu made the remarks in response to China's Taiwan Affairs Office Director Chen Yunlin (
"[Chen Yunlin's] comments reflect the fact that China is unable or unwilling to understand Taiwan," Wu said.
"Taiwan is a democratic country and the people of Taiwan should be entitled to make their own choice for the future based on their free will. The unification council and guidelines are products of the KMT dictatorship which restrict Taiwan's future options to unification alone. This is absolutely against the current status quo," Wu said.
KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
"What President Chen [has proposed] goes against public opinion and is harmful to Taiwan-US relations," Ma said. "Even foreign media are critical of the issue and can't help but wonder what Chen is doing."
Ma restated the KMT's cross-strait policy of maintaining the status quo, and warned of possible repercussions if the council and guidelines are scrapped.
"[The council] has its symbolic meaning, and abolishing it would do harm to Taiwan-US and Taiwan-China relations," Ma said. "A president should help to create national unity, instead of creating controversy and confusing the people."
Additional reporting by Chang Yun-ping
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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