The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday defended a decision by senior party members to allow Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) to answer questions in the legislature before it votes on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) later this month.
KMT caucus whip Lin Yi-shih (林益世) said the arrangement would help the public better understand the agreement.
Lin said the party would also incorporate the views of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on the ECFA in the form of supplementary resolutions.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) agreed on Monday to allow the legislature to review the controversial ECFA clause-by-clause, but insisted that the pact should be voted on as a whole.
Presidential Office Spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said Ma reached a consensus with Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), Wu, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and KMT Vice Chairman Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) during a weekly lunch at the Presidential Office on Monday.
The legislature is likely to hold the second provisional meeting of the spring legislative session from Aug. 16 to Aug. 31 to push through the agreement and other bills.
The KMT majority resolved on July 9 to allow the agreement to skip a preliminary review, referring it instead for a one-month cross-party negotiation.
The KMT dropped its plan to invite Wu to brief lawmakers after a brawl broke out between KMT and DPP lawmakers on the legislative floor.
The DPP caucus yesterday said that having the premier report to the legislature after the ECFA had been allowed to skip a committee review violated legislative procedure.
The premier is obliged to brief the legislature regarding the government’s administrative goals for the year and answer legislators’ questions at the beginning of every legislative session.
Legislative reviews of bills are usually held after the briefing is completed.
Article 17 of the Act Governing the Legislature's Exercise of Power (立法院職權行使法) also requires the premier and relevant Executive Yuan officials to brief the legislature on important matters.
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