The People First Party (PFP) yesterday said it plans to work with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to seek a constitutional interpretation on the legislative review of budget proposals for the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program.
At a news conference in Taipei, the PFP said it had also asked the Executive Yuan to withdraw the government’s general budget proposal since a major reshuffle of the Cabinet is expected after the resignation of Premier Lin Chuan (林全).
The budget proposals for the infrastructure program were approved on Thursday last week, but not without controversies, as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was accused of unconstitutionally distorting legislative rules to secure their legislative passage.
After the KMT proposed 10,421 motions related to the program’s budgets to delay the review, Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) announced that no issue would be voted on twice, thereby shelving the majority of the KMT’s motions after DPP-launched proposals were voted on.
The KMT has already said it would seek a constitutional interpretation of Thursday’s review
The DPP deprived opposition parties of the right to propose motions as a legislative strategy, making the legislative process a meaningless, as the DPP could bulldoze the bills through with its majority, PFP caucus convener Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said.
“If the PFP cannot protect the rights of opposition parties to raise motions and make speeches, it is neglecting democracy and permitting large parties to monopolize the system,” Lee said.
The DPP has set a dangerous precedent for handling opposition motions, as KMT Taitung County Council Speaker Rao Ching-ling (饒慶鈴) on Thursday threatened to shelve bills proposed by DPP county councilors citing the principle of “no repeat votes on a single issue,” PFP Legislator Chen Yi-chieh (陳怡潔) said.
The three-member PFP caucus urged the KMT, the New Power Party (NPP) and independent lawmakers to join the cause
KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) said the KMT would cooperate with the PFP and form a task force made up of four KMT lawmakers and two PFP lawmakers to seek a constitutional interpretation, and is willing to pay the legal expenses involved in such a process.
However, the NPP said it would not join the PFP-KMT initiative because the Council of Grand Justices would not interfere with the Legislative Yuan’s autonomy due to the separation of powers.
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
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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