The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday cited a recent poll, as well as previous polls , to support its stance that most people do not want the voting age lowered.
The KMT also said the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) proposal to amend the Constitution to lower the voting age was a potential threat to social order.
During a two-day policy meeting this week, the DPP said it would push for a constitutional amendment to lower the voting age and set the abolition of the Examination and Control yuans as a long-term goal.
The KMT caucus told a press conference yesterday that the idea of amending the Constitution without a clear social consensus would “incite instability” and be bad for the nation’s development.
None of the recent issues requiring amending the Constitution — such as lowering the voting threshold or increasing the number of seats in the legislature — has garnered popular support exceeding the necessary three-quarters majority, the KMT said.
“According to a poll conducted earlier this month by the KMT’s research center, 56.1 percent of respondents disapproved of lowering the voting age to 18 and only 32.9 percent were for it,” KMT caucus deputy secretary Alex Fai (費鴻泰) said.
A National Development Committee survey late last month also found that 55 percent of respondents were against lowering the threshold, he said.
A similar survey conducted in 2004, when the DPP was in power, found that 69.7 percent of respondents were against the proposal (26.4 percent were in favor), and 67.4 percent of respondents to a Ministry of the Interior poll in 2011 said they did not support changing the voting age, while 26.1 percent were for it, the KMT said.
While the number of those against the lowering of the voting age has been decreasing, the difference between proponents and opponents has remained at 20 percentage points or more, showing that there was nowhere near the required number of people to approve changing the threshold, the KMT caucus said.
Economics is something that everybody cares about and that is what the extra session should focus on, KMT caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said, adding that the KMT would not consider any bill concerning constitutional amendments.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods