A proposed amendment that would mean anybody found guilty of corruption in a first trial would be ineligible to stand as a candidate for the presidency or vice presidency cleared the legislature's Procedure Committee yesterday.
The amendment to the President and Vice President Election and Recall Law (
Ma has said that he will run in next year's presidential race even if he is found guilty in his first trial.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Four People First Party (PFP) lawmakers sitting on the Procedure Committee were absent from the meeting yesterday, meaning the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) did not have the numbers to block the DPP's proposed amendment.
PFP lawmakers Lee Hung-chun (
KMT legislative caucus whip Hsu Shao-ping (
"She [the aide] told me that they [the four PFP lawmakers] were at a meeting and might not be able to make it to the Procedure Committee in time because of traffic," Hsu said.
DPP Legislator Chen Chin-te (陳金德) proposed the change in the wake of Ma's indictment on corruption charges over his alleged misuse of the mayoral special allowance when he was Taipei mayor.
An anonymous DPP source said that the PFP's move was intended to show their discontent with the KMT over negotiations on joint nominations for the year-end legislative elections.
"The PFP was already unhappy with the KMT because it preferred Keelung Council Speaker Chang Tong-rong (張通榮) [of the KMT] over the PFP's Liu Wen-hsiung (劉文雄) as its nominee for the upcoming Keelung mayor by-election," the source said.
Hsu dismissed the allegations.
However, DPP Legislative caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (
"That the PFP can act on its own rather than side with the KMT is helpful to resolve chronic confrontation in the legislature between the pan-blue and pan-green camps," he said.
Lawmakers will decide whether to refer the amendment to its related committees for primary review during a plenary session on Friday.
Hsu said the KMT caucus would move to send it back to the Procedure Committee.
But Ker said the DPP will motion to send the amendment directly to its second reading on Friday.
Ker added that he expected to gain support from KMT lawmakers who favor Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) as the party's presidential candidate over Ma.
KMT Secretary-General Wu Den-yih (
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