The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), with an eye toward bringing the confirmation vote on the Control Yuan nominees to a close in the second extraordinary legislative session scheduled to commence on Monday next week, held another intra-party discussion panel yesterday to allow the legislators to “have better understanding of and communicate with the nominees.”
The KMT organized two discussion panels on the past two Sundays, and the aim was to dispel doubts over the controversial nominations and the review process, which have encountered criticism from the KMT’s and opposition parties’ legislators alike.
Yesterday’s panel was to include 26 lawmakers, but several failed to appear and few stayed for the duration.
Attendance and participation was no better at the first panel on July 13, with 16 of the 20 who had agreed to attend making appearances, a party spokesperson said.
At least a dozen of the KMT’s 65 lawmakers failed to attend the panels.
KMT deputy caucus whip Wang Ting-son (王廷升) said the party would send written documents to those who did not attend the discussions for reference.
Wang said that the panels were held only for an exchange of opinions, rather than to reach a resolution.
“The communication undertaken is to let the public know that the KMT caucus’ mechanism of nominee-reviewing has been operating in the strictest manner, so we did not come to any unanimous conclusion today,” Wang said.
He added that the panels were also a manifestation demonstrating that “[the KMT] is replacing party discipline with [in-party] communication.”
KMT Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟), convener of the party’s review committee for the nominee list, said several nominees who appeared before the panels tried to defend their qualifications, but “it is not like we would buy everything they said.”
When asked whether the KMT has come up with strategies to counter the opposition parties’ possible blocking of the vote by “technical hindrance” in the second extra session, Wang said countermeasures would be considered during the caucus meeting slated for next Monday or Tuesday before the vote.
The Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union blocked the confirmation vote on the final day of the first extraordinary session by lining up to receive the ballot papers, but refusing to accept them.
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