The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) legislative caucus has failed to play an effective watchdog role in response to Saturday’s meeting between President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), a third-force legislative candidate said yesterday.
“While I can understand that the DPP has had a very reserved response because it’s preparing to rule, I think the people expect more than this from a prospective ruling party,” said Green Party-Social Democratic Party Alliance candidate Miao Bo-ya (苗博雅), condemning the DPP for “failing to take constitutionally significant” actions to oppose the meeting.
“Although individual DPP members have issued statements against the talks, they have not used their capacity as national legislators to oppose the talks and create a meaningful precedent,” she said.
Even though the DPP lacks a majority in the Legislative Yuan, there were still several actions the caucus could have taken to oppose the talks, including sponsoring a petition to the Council of Grand Justices to rule on whether the arrangement of the meeting was constitutional, she said, adding that the council would be required to give a ruling if one-third of national legislators signed the petition.
“While they’ve recently repeatedly stated that the meeting was opaque and ‘black-box,’ if the ‘black-box’ arrangement was not in violation of the Constitution, then in reality Ma did not do anything illegal,” she said.
Critics maintain that Ma’s arrangement of the meeting without prior approval from the Legislative Yuan violated constitutional provisions requiring that all major national affairs be approved by the legislature.
Miao said the DPP caucus could also propose a resolution calling for the rejection of the meeting results and the establishment of a committee to investigate negotiations during the meeting, stating both resolutions would spark public discussion even if they failed to pass.
She also criticized the DPP caucus for opposing Ma’s proposal to deliver a report on the meeting to the Legislative Yuan.
“I don’t think that allowing him to come [to deliver a report] is endorsing the meeting — you can still ask questions and express your opposition,” she said, adding that the report represented an opportunity to leave behind the precedent of legislative supervision.
Miao’s comments followed criticism from New Power Party candidate Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智), who late on Sunday said that DPP whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) and DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) “seriously neglected their duties” for failing to take action to recall or impeach Ma for violating the Constitution.
Chiu is in competition with Ker for the Hsinchu City legislative district seat.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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