The Nationalist Chinese Party (KMT) Central Evaluation and Discipline Committee has voted to suspend the party duties and privileges of Apollo Chen (陳學聖) for one year, following his dissenting vote on an amendment to the Land Administration Agents Act (地政士法) last month.
After receiving the news, Chen said: “Since I cast the vote, I must have the courage to bear the consequences.”
“After some time has passed, everyone will know that I stood up for the public with the right decision,” he added.
In a meeting yesterday, the committee passed the one-year suspension unanimously.
At the legislature’s extra session on Jan. 27 and Jan. 28, the KMT called on all party lawmakers to attend the vote and to approve the amendment to the Land Administration Agents Act. However, Apollo Chen did not toe the party line and cast a dissenting vote.
The KMT committee said that Chen had violated the party charter’s article by not following the resolution, policies and guiding principles of the party, and therefore it was forced to hand out the suspension.
The amendment to the Land Administration Agents Act was passed by the legislature on Jan. 3. It aims to ease land administration agents’ responsibility for registering real-estate sales prices by allowing them a second chance to revise a registration.
However, the Executive Yuan has decided the amendment could provide a loophole that might undermine the actual-price registration system for property transactions launched by the government on Aug. 1, 2012, to curb property speculation and increase transparency in the housing market.
In an attempt to fight the ongiong inflation of property prices, the government has required that buyers, real-estate brokers and land administration agents register the actual transaction prices of properties or face a fine.
The amended act was seen by the Executive Yuan as a loophole that could undermine the real-estate transaction price registration system.
Land administration agents made protests last month against the Executive Yuan’s request to rescind the amendment.
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
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
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