In the wake of Taiwan being named as one of the countries whose legislatures “do not work for the people,” Citizen’s Congress Watch (CCW) yesterday called for reform to put an end to “irregularities” in the legislature.
The US-based Foreign Policy journal had on July 20 named Taiwan, along with the US and other countries, as nations whose legislatures do not work for the people
CCW member Chen Ming-li (陳明里) told a news conference at the legislature that he had observed at least five irregularities during the last legislative session.
First is “kickboxing,” Chen said, referring to serious physical clashes between lawmakers.
Second is “verbal conflict” and the third is “conquering the summit,” referring to lawmakers’ attempt to take over the legislative speaker’s seat to block the passage of certain bills, Chen said.
Fourth is “negotiations behind closed doors” and the fifth is “voting on bills without prior negotiation,” Chen said.
“We need a set of more up-to-date regulations on how the legislature should work and how lawmakers should behave,” Chen said. “For example, it has been nine years since the Legislators’ Conduct Act (立法委員行為法) was last amended, and it’s been 11 years since the Act to Prevent Conflict of Interest for Public Officials (公職人員利益衝突迴避法)” was passed.
CCW chairman Shih Hsin-min (施信民) said that although legislative meetings could now be seen online through the Legislative Yuan’s video-on-demand (VOD) system, “it’s still not transparent enough.”
While everyone can access the VOD system from home, viewers can only see what is on camera or hear whatever the microphones record.
“Out of eight permanent legislative committees, only three allow CCW to send observers,” Shih said.
“When the members of the seventh legislature were sworn in [in February 2008], many of them agreed in writing to CCW’s demand to push for legislative reforms, including guidelines on avoiding conflicts of interest, making donations, the legislative process and making negotiations more transparent,” Shih said.
“Unfortunately, most of the promises have not been fulfilled,” Shih said.
Chu Hei-yuan (瞿海源), a CCW member and a research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology, suggested shrinking legislative electoral districts to prevent lawmakers from exercising too much power.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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