Several civic groups yesterday urged the nation’s major political parties to establish a cross-party platform for constitutional reform, which would serve to facilitate bipartisan cooperation on the issue.
Led by the Civic Alliance to Promote Constitutional Reform, the groups urged the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to support their agenda for a two-part process for constitutional reform, as it has already received support from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union, as well as the Green Party.
The groups advocate increased public involvement in upcoming possible reforms, in which certain procedural amendments — such as lowering the threshold for referendums — can be carried out first next year, while more divisive issues on the structure of the government would not be addressed before a series of grassroots forums leading up to 2018.
They said that both major political parties have failed to present comprehensive propositions on constitutional reform, putting the reforms at risk of “ending carelessly.”
Although DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Monday said that the DPP rejects reforms geared toward a parliamentary system, the groups said that the party’s position on reform remained unclear.
“We hope the DPP does not limit itself to saying which reforms it rejects, but rather makes clear what it stands for,” Taiwan Democracy Watch member Yen Chueh-an (顏厥安) said.
The activists also panned a KMT proposal for the legislature’s right to confirm the president’s choice of premier to be reinstated, saying that the suggestion signaled only “a raw display of political calculation” and failed to address the nation’s current political impasse.
As the DPP is widely perceived as more likely to triumph in next year’s presidential election, a move to reinstate the requirement for the legislature’s approval of premier could be seen as preparing for a future DPP administration, the activists said.
They said that the KMT should leave more divisive reforms of the nation’s political system to the second phase of the constitutional reforms planned for 2018.
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