Multiple constitutional mechanisms, including a recall of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet, should be enacted simultaneously to hold Ma accountable for infringing the Constitution and staging political persecutions that have destabilized the country, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers said at a press conference in Taipei yesterday.
DPP Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said separately that the party would take whatever action is needed within two weeks if Ma does not apologize for his mistakes and step down.
Su had said on Monday that the measures would be taken at “an appropriate time” and also appealed to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers to “make the right decision” in supporting the measures.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) initiated a proposal for the no-confidence motion against the Cabinet last week and is collecting signatures to back it.
Thirty-three DPP legislators have endorsed Yeh’s proposal and the initiative was five signatures away from meeting the threshold to make it official, the lawmaker said yesterday morning, adding that the passage of the motion is banking on the support of more than a dozen KMT lawmakers.
The initiative should have no problem meeting the threshold — the signatures of more than one-third of the total number of legislators.
The Additional Articles of the Constitution stipulate that 72 hours after a no-confidence motion is filed, an open-ballot vote must be taken within 48 hours. The motion passes if at least half the lawmakers vote in favor of it.
If the motion is passed, the premier is required to resign within 10 days and a legislative by-election must be held no later than 60 days after the president dissolves the legislature.
However, some DPP lawmakers say the no-confidence motion is not the right tactic to adopt at this moment.
DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said that the root cause for the current political stalemate lies in Ma’s vicious and illegal political maneuvers, which were aimed at expanding his presidential power to control the three branches of government.
That is why the legislature should immediately launch a probe into Ma’s alleged misconduct before initiating a recall campaign or a no-confidence motion and “let the public be the judges on the political gridlock,” DPP Legislator Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) said.
Recalling the president would be even more difficult than passing the no-confidence motion, as a recall bid must first be proposed by one-quarter of all legislators, then ratified by two-thirds of all legislators before it is put to a national referendum.
A successful recall requires 50 percent voter support in a referendum and a turnout of more than 50 percent of registered voters.
Separately yesterday, Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) was asked to comment on the idea proposed recently by C.V. Chen (陳長文), a lawyer and confidant of Ma’s, that the president dissolve the legislature to break the gridlock.
C.V. Chen made the remarks in an opinion piece published by the Chinese-language China Times on Monday.
Jiang said he respected the right of the legislature to initiate a motion of no-confidence against the Cabinet, adding that he was not in a position to comment on the issue.
The president can only invoke the constitutional right to dissolve the legislature after it passes a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet, Jiang said.
“The right to initiate the mechanism rests with the legislature,” he said.
DPP Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) had told the press conference in Taipei that “Ma is the one who initiated the political plot against Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and should be held responsible for his mistake. It does not make sense to instead punish the legislature with a dissolution.”
“You do not punish a white cat when a black cat steals food,” he added.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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