A dispute over the starting date of the new legislative session was resolved yesterday, with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus agreeing that the session would begin today, as long as Premier William Lai (賴清德) would put off his policy report before the legislature to Tuesday.
The agreement was formalized yesterday morning after Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) presided over a meeting of the caucuses.
The caucuses held a meeting on Aug. 31 to set a date for the opening of the new legislative session. However, with the KMT boycotting the discussion, only the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the New Power Party and the People First Party caucuses signed an agreement to set the date for today.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) later obtained a verbal agreement from the KMT caucus that the session would start today.
Legislative Yuan Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) also notified the KMT of the commencement date by telephone.
Su yesterday convened the caucuses to obtain the KMT’s signature and complete the legal procedure for the start of the legislative session.
However, KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) unexpectedly said that the KMT was under no obligation to sign any agreement that was reached without its participation, regardless of Lin Chih-chia’s notification.
Instead, Lin Wei-chou offered two proposals from the party: one, hold another round of talks on the legislative session’s starting date, which should not be earlier than Friday next week; or two, start the session today on the condition that Lai delays his report to the legislature to Tuesday.
After deliberating over the issue, Su accepted the KMT’s second proposal, saying the Legislative Yuan has more than 1,000 bills awaiting scheduling for committee review and Lai’s report could be given at a later time.
Ker said the caucuses should see to it that all of the bills awaiting committee scheduling are properly dealt with to avoid wasting time in the legislature.
When asked for comment, Ker said it was the KMT that refused to take part in the deliberations on Aug. 31, but each lawmaker has a schedule to keep and it is necessary to schedule a starting date in a timely manner.
KMT caucus convener Lin Te-fu (林德福) had given an explicit verbal agreement to the starting date, Ker said.
“This is not something to fight over,” he said. “The opposition party should have been eager to start the session for an opportunity to question Lai.”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift