The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus urged the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday, Constitution Day, to realize its promise of assisting with constitutional reform.
"We hope the KMT will clearly tell the public again whether it still stands by its promise to the DPP to achieve three major constitutional reforms," said DPP legislative caucus leader Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁).
Those goals, Chen said, include reducing by half the number of seats in the legislature, giving people the right of initiative to amend the Constitution, and inserting an article on assets stolen by political parties into the Constitution.
"We remember that KMT caucus leader Lee Chia-chin (
"The KMT originally said the initiative article was the people's basic right and this mechanism should be written into the Referendum Law," Chen said. "However, it revoked the article of initiative from its referendum bill, which demonstrated that the party is continually cheating the people of Taiwan," he said.
According to the newly passed Referendum Law, only the Legislative Yuan can propose a constitutional amendment.
Chen said the DPP wished to hammer out the entire legislative procedure for constitutional amendments on legislative reform before the end of this session, but added the KMT reversed its stance on the issue and now blocks any move by the DPP at the Legislative Yuan.
DPP Legislator Lai Ching-te (
Lai said the four major parties signed on during the 2001 legislative election to support the reforms, which included reducing the number of legislative seats and replacing the multi-member district, one-vote electoral system with a single-member district, two-vote system.
"The KMT even signed on to support investigating all political parties' assets and to insert an article into the Constitution stating that parties cannot own companies," Lai said. "It is obvious that the KMT has retreated from its position."
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS