Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairwoman Chang Po-ya (張博雅) yesterday refuted reports from TV channel TVBS that the presidential and legislative elections would be held simultaneously on Jan. 14.
Chang told a meeting in the legislature that the commission had yet to make a decision on whether the two elections would be merged into one.
The commission plans to hold five public hearings on the issue throughout the country to gather public opinion and would “try” to make a final decision by the end of next month as per requests by lawmakers, who say the original June deadline may be too late for them to make campaign preparations, Chang said.
She said it would technically be very difficult to implement absentee voting if the two elections were combined.
If it were eventually decided that the two elections would be held simultaneously, the plan to introduce absentee voting for the presidential election would have to be postponed because of the complexity of organizing the legislative elections, she said.
The presidential term runs until May 19 next year and the next term is scheduled to begin on May 20. The term of the seventh legislature lasts until Jan. 31 next year, with the eighth session due to be seated on Feb. 1.
Presidential elections are usually held in March, while legislative elections usually take place in December or January.
Since it is unlikely the date of the legislative election would be pushed back, a proposal has been made for the presidential election to be brought forward to January so that the two polls could be held simultaneously.
Proponents of the idea say it would help conserve public resources and that there are currently too many elections. The estimated costs for the presidential and legislative elections are NT$10 billion (US$33.9 million) and NT$11 billion respectively.
Combining the elections could save the nation between NT$7 billion and NT$8 billion, excluding the overhead for printing ballots, proponents have said.
According to the Election and Recall Act (選舉罷免法), there is no legal reason the two elections cannot be combined.
Article 35 of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) stipulates that the presidential election must be held a month before a presidential term ends.
According to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), legislative elections should be held 10 days prior to the end of a legislative session.
However, some academics worry that combining the elections in the middle of January would create a four-month window between the presidential election and the swearing-in of the new president that could create a “political vacuum.”
Taiwan Brain Trust president Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) recently told a forum that in a scenario involving the transition of power — in this case from the KMT to the DPP — a defeated president should be barred from making any fundamental governmental decision until the new president is sworn in.
Otherwise, a lame duck president could face tremendous pressure from the Chinese Communist Party to make a number of concessions in his or her last months in office that could severely undermine national security, he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods