Despite recent flooding problems that have put the focus on a flood control bill that has been blocked in the legislature, the pan-blue camp repeated yesterday that their bid to recall the president will be the top priority at a special legislative session that could start tomorrow.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) will hold separate caucus meetings this morning to confirm their joint agenda, with KMT secretary-general Chan Chuen-pao (詹春柏) and PFP Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) attending to show their support for the recall bid.
"If all goes smoothly, a vote on the recall motion could happen on June 27," PFP legislative caucus whip Lee Hung-chun (
Under the pan-blue plan, the motion will be put on the agenda today and be reviewed on the legislative floor 15 days later, based on Article 44 of the Law Governing Legislators' Exercise of Power (
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) will convene a cross-party negotiation this morning, which will be the last chance for legislators to discuss the date and agenda for the special session.
"If the negotiations fail again, arrangements for the session will be decided by a vote at tomorrow's informal meeting," Wang said.
The cross-party talks on the special session have broken down twice, after the legislature's normal session ended in chaos on May 31, due to an impasse over a pan-blue sponsored bill to push forward direct transportation links with China. The pan-green camp used stalling tactics to block the bill's review.
The DPP legislative caucus then submitted a proposal to convene an extraordinary session in order to pass some budget bills that were blocked in the normal session.
The KMT and PFP, who initially opposed holding a special session before the legislature convenes again in September, changed their minds and now support a special session this month.
Amid a snowballing insider trading scandal involving the first family, the KMT and PFP jointly submitted a proposal to hold a special session that will include a motion to recall the president.
DPP legislative whip Chen Chin-jun (
But Pan Wei-kang (
"There's no conflict between reviewing the budget bill for flood management and pushing the recall motion forward. As the legislature will vote on the recall motion 15 days after it is put onto the agenda, we can review the [flood control] budget while waiting for the [recall] vote," Pan said.
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
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
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