The presidential and legislative elections next year are to be held on the same day, but the date has not yet been decided, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said on Thursday.
The decision regarding the election of the nation’s 15th president and its 10th legislature was reached after consultation with concerned parties, the commission said in a statement.
Acting CEC Chairman Chen Chao-chien (陳朝建) said that the elections would be held concurrently in January next year.
Photo: CNA
It has become the norm to hold the elections on the same day, as was done in 2012 and 2016, Democratic Progressive Party spokesman Johnny Lin (林琮盛) said, adding that his party supports the decision.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is also in favor of the decision, spokesman Ouyang Lung (歐陽龍) said.
However, they should be held in March, not January, he said.
The commission should also consider revising the regulations on when newly elected legislators are required to take office, he said.
New legislators should be allowed to take up their posts on the same day that the president is sworn in, which would allow a smoother transition, he said.
After a January election, new legislators would take office in February, while the president-elect would take office in May.
Meanwhile, Chen said that the commission is considering an amendment to allow referendums to be held separately from elections.
Currently, referendums can only be held alongside a nationwide election.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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