Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday threatened to continue their boycott of the legislature’s plenary session if the Cabinet did not revoke its decision to raise electricity rates.
Such a boycott would mean that the Legislature would not be able to vote on a bill to allow imports of US beef containing residues of the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine, DPP caucus whip Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said.
“There is no room for retreat,” she said, indicating her party’s intention to stymie the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to pass the so-called “beef bill” if the DPP’s request on the electricity issue was ignored.
KMT caucus whip Hsu Yao-chang (徐耀昌) asked the opposition party to show restraint.
“It is irrational to boycott the meeting,” he said, adding he would continue to negotiate with the DPP caucus on the issue.
Lawmakers are scheduled to vote on Tuesday on amendments to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法), which President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration have been pushing to ease the restrictions on US beef.
Ma said that Taiwan would not be able to join the global economic and trade system if it continued to lock out US beef imports.
Public health would not be sacrificed, since people would have the choice not to buy or eat US beef, Ma said in Chiayi.
However, if Taiwan refuses to open up to US beef imports, “how can they [the US] be convinced that we want trade liberalization?” he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift