The Cabinet approved an amendment yesterday providing the legal basis for counties and cities to merge so they could meet the requirements for an upgrade to special municipality status.
At present, the only prerequisite in the Local Government Act (
Special municipalities are at the top of three levels of local self-governing organizations, followed by counties and provincial municipalities and then townships and county municipalities.
"We could see the merger of Taichung County and Taichung City and a promotion of Taichung to special municipality status on Dec. 20, 2009, at the earliest," Vice Minister of the Ministry of Interior Lin Mei-chu (
She said the provision was contingent on the passage of amendments to the Act and to the Law Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) as well as the establishment of a long-stalled draft bill on an administrative zoning law.
The Cabinet also called for the reduction in the frequency of elections by extending the four-year tenure of the county magistrates and city mayors to be elected in 2009 by an additional year.
As a result of the change, the elections for the next two county magistrates and city mayors will be held in tandem with the 2014 elections for Taipei City mayor and Kaohsiung City mayor.
Also included in the amendment was the abolition of regular elections for the 319 township chiefs and the 3,771 seats in the township representative councils.
If the elections are abolished, township chiefs would be appointed by local commissioners.
Despite charges that the abolition would undermine democracy, there has been consensus since the National Development Conference in 1996, where parties drew a blueprint for the future, on the adoption of a two-level system of local government, Lin said.
To mitigate the impact of the removal of the township chief position -- a majority of which are held by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members -- the amendment said local government commissioners could retain township chiefs who have performed well, Lin said.
Asked for comment, KMT caucus whip Tseng Yung-chuan (
Allowing people to elect township chiefs is democratic. Giving mayors and commissioners the authority to appoint township chiefs would be a "setback" for democracy, Tseng said.
Additional reporting by Flora Wang
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS