Although some progress has been made in reaching a consensus on a series of "non-political" bills over the past few days, controversial bills concerning next year's presidential election are still on the pan-blue camp's list of priorities for the last two days of the extra legislative session scheduled to end on Friday.
The pan-blue-dominated Procedure Committee yesterday determined the sequence of the 17 bills to be reviewed at the plenary session tomorrow and Friday, following an agenda proposal made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The KMT proposal placed at the top of the agenda a budget bill for this fiscal year concerning state-owned enterprises and governmental nonprofit funds.
Second on the pan-blue camp's agenda is an amendment to the Organic Law of the Central Election Commission.
Next on the list was review of an amendment that would require the establishment of an absentee system, followed by an amendment that would require the commission to recount votes in a presidential election if the margin of difference is less than 3 percent, and an amendment that would prohibit referendums from being held simultaneously with national elections.
Also on the legislature's agenda was an amendment that would effectively clear KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (
The agenda sparked frustration from the pan-green camp.
"Was this extra session held just to deal with the presidential election? If Ma really cared about the livelihoods of fishermen, farmers and workers as he has said during his long-stay [trip to towns in the south], why didn't you [the pan-blue camp] prioritize bills concerning the public's livelihood?" DPP Legislator Kao Chien-chih (
Kao brought up a DPP agenda proposal that prioritized review of a bill to establish a national pension system, the NT$77.3 billion special budget for public construction projects, an amendment to raise monthly pensions for elderly farmers and a bill to set up a lobby system.
The committee rejected the agenda.
Lawmakers across party lines have reached a consensus on a bill regarding the national pension system, stipulating that the nation's 3.86 million people who are not covered by the insurance systems for public servants, teachers and the military, the labor insurance system, or the pension system must be provided with coverage.
A bill that would entail creating a lobby system also gained the backing of lawmakers across party lines during negotiations yesterday.
In order to ensure transparent lobbying, the bill would require lobbyists to register with an authority.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
As the legislature is currently controlled by the pan-blue camp, the KMT-backed amendment would ensure a pan-blue majority in the election commission by requiring that its members be nominated by parties in proportion to the parties' number of legislative seats.
The commission is currently appointed by the premier.
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
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
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