The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday appealed to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers ahead of today’s scheduled vote on proposals about the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, asking them to break party ranks and support the suspension of the controversial plant.
DPP and KMT lawmakers are expected to launch motions today to have their proposals — the DPP’s wants construction of plant in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Gongliao District (貢寮) suspended immediately, while the KMT wants a national referendum on the issue — discussed in the legislature’s plenary session.
Both initiatives are expected to be put to a vote today.
If the KMT proposal passes, a national referendum will be held asking: “Do you agree that construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant should be halted and that it not become operational (你是否同意核四廠停止興建不得運轉)?”
DPP spokesperson Lin Chun-hsien (林俊憲) said yesterday that the party hoped the 14 KMT lawmakers representing Taipei, New Taipei City and Keelung, who have yet to announce their position on the issue, would side with the DPP on calling for an immediate halt to construction.
The 14 are Lin Yu-fang (林郁方), Alex Tsai (蔡正元), Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛), Alex Fai (費鴻泰), Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆), Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄), Lo Ming-tsai (羅明才), Chiang Hui-chen (江惠貞), Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞), Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠), Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池), Lin Te-fu (林德福) and Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑).
Anti-nuclear civic groups plan to stage a protest today to “besiege” the legislature to pressure those lawmakers in favor of the plant.
“People are watching,” Lin Chun-hsien said, calling for KMT lawmakers to side with mainstream public opinion.
People First Party (PFP) Legislator Thomas Lee (李桐豪) appealed to the KMT not to ram the referendum proposal by using the “tyranny of majority.”
Thomas Lee reiterated his party’s position that lawmakers should wait for the assessment on the plant’s safety to be completed before deciding whether it should be allowed to begin commercial operations.
A plebiscite on the issue should not be held before safe operation of the plant is guaranteed and the legislature does its share, he said.
However, KMT caucus whip Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said his party would severely discipline party members who vote against the party line.
KMT lawmakers voting for the DPP’s proposal or against the KMT’s proposal would be viewed as a grave infraction, Lai said.
Meanwhile, DPP Legislator Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) criticized Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), the operator of the nation’s nuclear power plants, for providing inconsistent lists of its 45-member safety review panel and its refusal to provide a list of the 12 consultants from US-based General Electricity Co.
Taipower’s actions showed it had no intention of meeting the public’s demand that information about the nuclear power plants be transparent, he said.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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