Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政) yesterday proposed a draft amendment to the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) that would bar people who have been convicted of security breaches from running in national or local elections.
People convicted of offenses relating to organized crime, money laundering, firearms or drugs would be barred from election to civil servant positions if the amendments pass, Lo said on Monday, when the amendments were being drafted.
Since then, further restrictions were added barring candidacies of those who have been found guilty of security breaches under the Anti-infiltration Act (反滲透法), the National Security Act (國家安全法), the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法) and the National Intelligence Services Act (國家情報工作法).
Photo courtesy of Lo Chih-cheng’s office
It is hoped that the amendments can be passed in the next legislative session, to begin in February, and promulgated before the 2024 legislative and presidential elections, he said.
The DPP caucus is waiting to examine similar proposed amendments that are expected from other lawmakers and the Executive Yuan, and would consider integrating their ideas before introducing its own amendment to the legislature, he added.
Lo’s draft is to be submitted to a preliminary committee review rather than undergo procedures for a second reading, as the amendments would have far-reaching effects and require a careful review, he said.
Separately yesterday, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) instructed the Cabinet to submit its version of the draft amendments by Thursday next week, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said, adding that the Cabinet version is to include input from additional stakeholders.
Lo Ping-cheng said Su has instructed him to supervise and direct the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior to submit and pass the draft amendments “as an active response to public expectations” that people with such criminal records would be barred from the next national election.
The proposal is not meant to discriminate against former convicts, but to apply higher standards to those who would have public power and control public resources, the spokesman added.
Additional reporting by Chung Li-hua
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS