The Nationality Act (國籍法) does not deny naturalized citizens the right to vote for 10 years as reported in a newspaper, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday.
The Chinese-language China Times yesterday reported that the Taiwan International Family Association had proposed that the government should abolish Article 10 of the act, which it said stipulates that naturalized citizens can only vote 10 years after becoming Republic of China (ROC) citizens.
However, the ministry said that the report was inaccurate, as all ROC citizens aged 20 or above are eligible to vote if they have lived in an electoral district for four consecutive months, as stipulated by the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法).
In addition, all ROC citizens aged 18 or older also have the right to vote in a referendum if they have lived in the country for six months, as stipulated in the Referendum Act (公民投票法), the ministry said.
The ministry said that the Nationality Act only restricts new citizens from holding important government offices, such as president, vice president, legislator and premier, for the first 10 years after naturalization.
The association later said that it had called on the government to grant new citizens full suffrage rights.
A 10-year wait to be eligible to run for top posts is too long and people should be integrated quickly into society if they become citizens, it said.
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