The voting age for Taipei referendums should be lowered to 18, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
At a meeting of the city government’s Civil Participation Committee, Ko backed a proposal to ask the Taipei City Council to revise the Referendum Autonomous Articles under consideration, lowering the voting age by two years to 18.
Ko backs voting at 18 because that is the age at which people must shoulder legal responsibility for crimes, he said, expressing incredulity that proposals to lower the voting age had “disappeared” in the fight over potential constitutional amendments.
On being told the municipal change would conflict with the Referendum Act (公民投票法), he said the city should still include it and see whether the national government “dares to remove it.”
Taipei City Councilor Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤), of the Democratic Progressive Party, said she affirmed Ko’s advocacy of the change, but its true importance was symbolic, putting pressure on the national government.
Taipei City Council Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Chen Yung-te (陳永德) said the KMT would oppose Ko’s proposal.
“Who do you think you are to ‘sass’ the national government?” he asked, adding that Ko had failed to justify why 18 was an appropriate age threshold.
People First Party City Councilor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊), who is the lead sponsor of the Referendum Autonomous Articles draft and considered the swing vote of the council’s legislation committee, said Ko’s proposal was “nonsense” and “a waste of time” because it went beyond the scope of the city council’s power.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake yesterday struck off the coast of Hualien, causing brief transportation disruptions in northern and eastern Taiwan, as authorities said that aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher could occur over the next three days. The quake, which hit at 7:24pm at a depth of 24.5km, registered an intensity of 4 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. In Taipei, the MRT railway’s operations control center received an earthquake alert and initiated standard safety procedures, briefly halting trains on the Bannan (blue) line for about a minute.
RSS