The agreements on creating a direct, two-way aviation route north of the Taiwan Strait and opening cross-strait sea transportation links would be nullified if the two deals were vetoed by the legislature, Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said yesterday.
Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS), the two bodies responsible for cross-strait dealings in the absence of official contacts, signed the two agreements and the other two deals on postal service and a food safety mechanism on Tuesday in Taipei.
“If the legislature reaches a resolution to reject the two agreements [on aviation routes and sea links], we will have to inform ARATS that it would need to renegotiate the deals,” Liu said.
But the two agreements would be considered implemented if the legislature fails to ratify or override within 30 days of receiving the request, he said.
Liu made the remarks at a press conference following the weekly Cabinet meeting, where the four cross-strait agreements were approved, citing articles 5 and 95 of the Act Governing Relations Between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例).
Article 5 of the Act requires the Executive Yuan to refer the four agreements to the legislature for its reference and not for its deliberation as the contents of the four deals require no amendment to current laws and regulations, Liu said.
But Liu said the Executive Yuan is required by article 95 of the Act to obtain legislative ratification of the pacts on direct air and shipping before putting them into effect.
“It’s wrong to accuse the government of bypassing the legislative process to strike deals with [China,]” Liu said. “The legislature will not lose its power to supervise the government.”
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:
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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