A coalition of civic groups yesterday called for civic engagement and grassroots participation to push for constitutional reform, amid growing support for changes to the Constitution across party lines following the Nov. 29 elections last year.
The Civic Alliance to Promote Constitutional Reform, a coalition of 21 civic groups formed in October last year, said that constitutional amendments in the past lacked input from the public and were largely conducted in an “elitist” fashion.
The alliance laid out a timetable leading up to 2018, in which a series of public forums — including “grassroots forums (草根論壇)” and “promotion forums (推動論壇)” — are to be held around the nation to compile public opinion on constitutional reform, followed by a “civil convention on constitutional government” (公民憲政會議) to turn in a final version for legislative review.
Certain procedural amendments to invite broader participation in the reforms, such as lowering the threshold for referendums and lowering the minimum voting age, should be made through a faster separate process before next year’s presidential election, the alliance said.
Last month, 36 legislators from across party lines endorsed a proposal to amend the constitution as a way of resolving what they see as the nation’s constitutional-political impasse and lack of presidential accountability.
The motion followed separate proposals by New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who is the sole candidate for the Chinese Nationality Party’s (KMT) upcoming chairmanship election, and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to push for constitutional reform.
Human rights lawyer Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said that plans to reform the Constitution have been brewing since the Sunflower movement in March and early April last year, in which student-led protesters occupied the legislature’s main chamber to protest the government’s handling of a proposed cross-strait service trade agreement.
Lai said that events leading up to the Sunflower movement illustrated a “crisis in constitutional government,” in which the “unrestrained power” of the executive branch infringed upon the legislative process.
Taiwan Democracy Watch convener Hsu Wei-chun (徐偉群) said that although recent calls for constitutional reform made by politicians provided a “long-awaited political opportunity” for the alliance, reform should not follow in the footsteps of past amendments — referring to the seven amendments made to the Constitution between 1991 and 2005.
“Past constitutional amendments completely ignored the opinion of the people,” Covenants and Conventions Watch convener Huang Song-lih (黃嵩立) said. “Our goal is to allow all members of the public to become involved in constitutional reform.”
Given that the constitution should be representative of the “fundamental values” of the nation, disadvantaged groups, such as women’s rights groups or advocates for the nation’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, should also be involved in the process of constitutional reform, the alliance said.
The activists said they had presented their proposal to representatives of the Taiwan Solidarity Union and the People First Party last week, and are set to engage in discussions with the two major parties soon.
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:
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