President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that whether he will give a state of the nation address to the Legislative Yuan depends on the Constitution, adding that it clearly states the duties of the president and that he should be in the second line when facing the legislature.
Under the Constitution, the Executive Yuan and not the president is responsible to the legislature, Ma said, adding that this is why he will not preside over a Cabinet meeting nor will he lead Cabinet members to report to the legislature.
However, in other matters, the president should be “in the front line facing the people, because I was elected by the people,” Ma said.
The Constitution stipulates that the legislature can listen to the president’s state of the nation report in its annual meeting, although no president has ever given one before. Ma made the remarks while presiding over a changeover ceremony of Cabinet members at the Presidential Office.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) proposed on Friday that Ma should deliver such a report to the legislature, saying that he had obtained the endorsement of more than 30 legislators for the proposal.
DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) also said at the time that Ma should answer questions posed by legislators, which he said “would show Ma’s sincerity in leaving a historical legacy.”
Legislators from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which controls 64 of the 113 seats in the legislature, have reacted cautiously to the proposal, saying that the matter should follow the Constitution and that the president’s dignity should be taken into consideration.
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
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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