The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has high expectations for its 40-member legislative caucus in the new session, with seven more seats than in the outgoing legislature, party heavyweights said yesterday.
“One thing is sure — that we will do our best to monitor the [President] Ma [Ying-jeou (馬英九)] administration, in particular its economic performance in the wake of any global economic downturn,” Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), the DPP’s incumbent caucus whip, said at a press conference that laid out the caucus’ plan for the new session and introduced new caucus officials.
Pan Men-an (潘孟安) was named director-general of the caucus, while Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) took over as chief secretary and Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) as deputy director-general.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Ker said the DPP caucus would be active in the new session with its plan for a series of reform initiatives, including the interpretation of the Constitution, changes to the single-district electoral system and amendment of the Referendum Act (公民投票法), as well as proposals to reform the legislature.
Legislative proposals billed by the party as a priority in the -previous session, but which failed to pass, would also be re-submitted, Ker said.
Notable items of the proposals, which cover a wide range of issues, include the introduction of a property transaction tax based on actual transaction prices; promotion of a nuclear-free homeland by 2025; protection of judicial and human rights; and establishing a food security standard.
In terms of reform of the legislature, one of the most important initiatives would be to improve the transparency of the Procedure Committee, which had been “manipulated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) majority for years to block proposals by the DPP,” Ker said.
The committee is the only legislative committee that does not boradcast video coverage of its meetings live online, which is why the public never understood how the committee worked, Pan said.
The caucus is determined to dominate legislation and discussion of the economy and people’s well-being and to incorporate the key components of the DPP’s 10-year policy guidelines — such as the “New Agriculture Movement” and a 10-year long-term care system — into the legislation, Pan said.
The DPP lawmakers are -expected to highlight several central themes that had been raised in the party’s presidential election campaign, including fairness and justice in housing, taxation and the environment, Huang said.
“The DPP does not rule out collaboration with other political parties on any issue, if needed,” the caucus whip said.
In the new legislature, the KMT holds 64 of the 113 legislative seats, the DPP has 40 and the Taiwan Solidarity Union, an ally of the DPP, has three.
The People First Party, generally aligned with the KMT, also has three seats and the other three seats are held by legislators without major party affiliations.
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