Staff Reporter
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed a motion to convene a provisional legislative session calling for the review of 35 bills with an amendment to the Central Election Commission (CEC) listed ahead of a budget bill given priority by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
The controversy over a KMT-proposed bill designed to select members of the CEC in accordance with the number of legislative seats each party holds paralyzed the final day of the last session on Friday.
To compensate for the fact that the central government's budget bill and other bills of significance to the nation remained stuck in the legislature, the pan-green camp had proposed a motion for an extra session on Monday.
The DPP demanded the budget bill be made the first item on the agenda of any provisional session, while the KMT said that the budget bill should be put below the CEC bill.
"In our proposal, the first 29 bills to be reviewed in the extra session are the bills on which all parties have reached a consensus, the 30th is the CEC bill, and the 31st is the budget bill," KMT Secretary-General Wu Den-yih (
The last three bills of the proposal are a bill calling for the opening of cross-strait transportation, a bill for imposing stricter regulations on smoking and a bill related to the government's proposal to adjust pensions for civil servants.
Wu said that the agenda would be sent to the party's caucus meeting for approval.
DPP Legislative caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (
The DPP has accused the KMT of pushing the passage of the CEC bill to take control of the commission so that it can thwart a possible referendum demanding the KMT return its stolen assets to the nation.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods