The ruling and opposition parties have begun mobilizing lawmakers for what has been described as a showdown in the upcoming legislative plenary session tomorrow to vote on whether to invite President Chen Shui-bian (
The TSU, which submitted the resolution bill but later attempted to revoke it, failed to keep the bill off the plenary session's agenda after a vote at the legislative rules committee Friday.
TSU deputy legislative whip Chen Chien-ming (
Chen said that the timing and method of a state-of-the-nation address to the legislature must be governed by a set of legal measures that are currently lacking. The content of the address should be decided by the president himself, he added.
Meanwhile, opposition KMT legislator Lin Yi-shi (
No Taiwanese president has ever delivered a report to the Legislative Yuan. Such a report was in the past normally delivered to the National Assembly, which is now a non-standing body.
The amended ROC Constitution allows for the Legislative Yuan to invite the president to deliver a report, but the previous legislature did not call for such an invitation because of concerns that such a move might blur the checks-and-balances relationship between the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan as well as because the political parties believed it was meaningless to listen to a presidential report without being able to field questions.
TSU legislator Su Ying-kuei (
"The president wields power bestowed upon him by the public so he has to shoulder responsibility by reporting to the highest national assembly," he said.
Su considered it inappropriate for the president to promulgate his ideas on unofficial occasions such as during interviews with the media or when receiving guests.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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