The three agreements Taiwan signed with China in April will automatically go into effect later this month despite Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) opposition.
The Internal Administration Committee and four other legislative committees yesterday held a joint meeting to review the three agreements on financial cooperation, expansion of air links and joint efforts to combat crime and boost judicial cooperation.
The executive branch had originally asked the legislature to ratify the three agreements, but the legislature decided to review them at the request of the DPP caucus.
Yesterday's marathon review session did not produce any results because of a technical boycott by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The DPP could not launch a vote on the three agreements given its numerical disadvantage.
One-third of the committee members, or 24, must be present to form a quorum. The DPP has only 17. The KMT has 53, but only three were present when the DPP filed a request for a vote.
The DPP filed eight motions to change the agreements and requested the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) place the changes on the agenda of the upcoming cross-strait talks scheduled for the second half of the year.
One of the motions stipulate that the three agreements cannot take effect until all necessary legal procedures have been completed.
KMT Legislator Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠), chairman of the Internal Administration Committee, ruled that the committees could not deal with the motions because of a lack of quorum, saying they would tackle them another time.
The catch is the legislature will begin its summer recess on Tuesday. The three agreements, signed on April 26, will take effect 60 days after signing.
The three agreements signed last November also automatically went into effect 40 days after they were signed.
DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) engaged in a shouting match with MAC Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) when Chiu asked Lai whether the three agreements were written in traditional Chinese or simplified Chinese and whether she would sign future agreements in simplified Chinese if China or Ma wanted this.
Lai irked Chiu when Lai dismissed it as a non-issue.
Visibly upset by Lai's answer that cross-strait negotiations were conducted under the principle of equality and dignity, Chiu pounded on the table and called Lai “shameful” and “unqualified” to talk about dignity because she did not have any.
KMT Legislator Wu Ching-chih (吳清池) cast doubt on the fast pace of cross-strait negotiations, saying it has posed a serious problem.
“It is obvious that Taiwan's politics has been kidnapped by China's economy,” he said.
“I am worried that our military and national security have been compromised to an extent that it's almost as if we have surrendered,” he said.
Wu urged the government to offer a clear account of the positive and negative effects of the financial cooperation with Beijing, saying Taiwan's economy would be doomed if only big businesses, not the general public, benefit from the agreements.
DPP Legislator William Lai (賴清德) said the three agreements must obtain the consent of the legislature before they go into effect.
Citing the national insurance program as an example, Lai said the government did not need legislative approval to increase the premium if the adjustment was less than 6 percent. The legislature, however, requested a review and the government complied.
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