TSU and DPP lawmakers yesterday demanded PFP Legislator Diane Lee (
The four-day-long soap opera began with Lee accusing Twu of kissing restaurant proprietor Cheng Ko-jung (
But TSU lawmakers say they consider Lee's apology to be insufficient punishment and urged her to resign.
"Although Lee made the apology, she is not remorseful for what she has done," said TSU Legislator Liao Pen-yen (
He pointed out that the job of lawmakers is to monitor, not to vilify, officials.
"Lee collaborated with the media to hand down the verdict before a trial was held. Her modus operandi has not been halted," Liao said.
Liao said lawmakers such as Lee have provoked commotion in society because they have often launched groundless accusations in order to raise their own level of exposure in the media.
In March 2000, after the KMT lost the presidential election, former New Party lawmakers Elmer Fung (
In September 2000, PFP Legislator Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) accused President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of having received US$5 million in financial aid from China during his presidential campaign.
On April 2 this year, PFP Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (
Following the confirmation hearings for the Examination Yuan's president in June, KMT Legislator Lee Chia-chin (
Liao said none of these allegations have proven to be true and that the purpose of these pan-blue lawmakers obviously was to attack the government.
DPP Legislator Peter Lin (林進興) suggested that the legislature's
Discipline Committee chastise Lee in the event that she does not resign.
Sharing the view of other pan-green camp legislators, Lin said Lee's apology was not sufficient to return justice to Twu, whose reputation he says was greatly smudged by Lee and Cheng's allegations.
"The Discipline Committee must mete out some sort of penalty," Lin said.
According to the Legislative Yuan's regulations, the Discipline Committee can request that a lawmaker committing an improper act offer an apology and/or face a three-to-six-month suspension, depending on the gravity of their wrongdoing.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay