Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislative caucuses yesterday said they plan to jointly propose establishing a Constitution Amendment Committee in the next legislative session.
“Amending the Constitution would be the most important task for politicians of our time, as the Constitution is the root of all Taiwan’s problems,” DPP caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said.
Ker was speaking at a meeting with representatives of pro-independence civic groups, who urged the DPP to propose removing text relating to “unification” in the Republic of China Constitution.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
The Organic Law of the Legislative Yuan (立法院組織法) permits the establishment of a Constitution Amendment Committee, consisting of one-third of the total legislative seats plus one lawmaker, Ker said. Past proposals to establish such a committee have been blocked by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Amendments to the Constitution must be passed by at least three-quarters of the members of the legislature and sanctioned by a national referendum. Given the high threshold, constitutional amendment would be difficult, requiring collaboration from all political parties, Ker said.
“However, we should at least establish the committee first because the mechanism is in place and the legislature should not abandon its mandate of constitutional amendment,” he said.
Ker said the DPP would collaborate with the TSU to propose establishing the committee and an Ad Hoc Committee on pension reform in the next legislative session.
Ker urged the KMT not to block the proposals in the Procedure Committee once they are submitted to the legislature.
TSU Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉), who is to be the party’s caucus whip in the next session, pledged the TSU’s full support for the proposal.
Representatives from the Taiwan Society, Taiwan Association of University Professors, Taiwan North Society and Hakka Society visited the DPP caucus yesterday and urged action on the Constitution.
The text “To meet the requisites of national unification ...” listed in the preface of the additional articles of the Constitution, should be removed to respond to mainstream public opinion, Taiwan Society president Wu Shu-min (吳樹民) said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the