The motion to set up a constitutional amendment committee was passed yesterday by the legislature’s Procedure Committee to be placed on the agenda for the next legislative floor meeting on Friday.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has taken up long-proposed calls for constitutional amendments after its rout in last month’s nine-in-one elections.
A group of KMT legislators worked last week to align with opposition lawmakers to propose the establishment of a constitutional amendment committee in a bid to solve a constitutional-political impasse said to have led to political upheavals in the past few years.
Photo: Taipei Times
KMT Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) and Democratic Progressive Party legislators Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) and Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) sponsored the motions to set up the committee, which according to law must be established to deliberate on revisions and reach resolutions.
KMT caucus whip Alex Fai (費鴻泰) said he expects the proposal to pass on Friday and added that a constitutional amendment team would be set up within the caucus to work out related issues.
The committee, if set up, would be the first since 2004.
Meanwhile, New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), the sole contender for KMT chairperson, reiterated that “constitutional amendments are a must.”
Chu has proposed revising the quasi-presidential system to a fully parliamentary system.
However, not everyone in the KMT seemed to like the idea, with Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), a KMT vice chairman, saying: “Do not try to abolish the presidential system out of dislike for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).”
Chu did not respond to Hu’s remark directly, but said that dysfunction in the political system has been manifest for the past 20 years and witnessed by everyone in the nation.
He is not the only one who has expressed concern over the current situation, Chu added, saying that the government must be reformed into one that sees power commensurate with accountability.
“[Amendments] should not involve partisan biases and personal calculation,” he said.
Chu said that, regardless of one’s attitude toward the proposed parliamentary system, anyone who is to roll out the amendment project has to speak to academics, experts and politicians from different parties.
Chu said the party would not be ruled by a single person’s dictates or by an unchallenged “supreme leader.”
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