In response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers, who took advantage of their superior numbers and pushed long-delayed budget bills through to their respective review committees, the pan-blue camp yesterday blocked all bills sponsored by the Cabinet and the DPP caucus from being put onto the legislature's agenda.
The DPP caucus yesterday initiated a vote on releasing the frozen budget bills for the Presidential Office, the Ministry of National Defense, the Department of Health and the Ministry of Education on the legislative floor, as many lawmakers from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) were absent.
As a result of the vote the four budget bills, stalled on the floor for over a month, were referred to related legislative committees for preliminary review.
"We asked our lawmakers to be present during today's session just in case the pan-blues tried to pass some controversial bills. And as most of them [the pan-blues] didn't show up, we decided to release all the frozen budget bills," DPP caucus whip Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) said.
While the DPP caucus was happy with its initial success, the KMT and PFP caucuses took revenge during the Procedure Committee meeting held later on.
Using their majority in the Procedure Committee, pan-blue lawmakers promptly rejected all the bills presented by the government and the DPP, including budget bills for the Executive Yuan, the Government Information Office, the Examination Yuan and the National Security Council, among other departments.
Chen said that in total NT$180 billion (US$5.6 billion) worth of government budgets remained frozen in the legislature, which had deeply impacted the normal operation of the government.
PFP caucus whip Lu Hsueh-chang (
"The DPP caucus shouldn't have voted on the bills without first reaching a consensus with opposition lawmakers," he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift