Standing behind a 21cm stack of more than 2,000 legislative proposals weighing 15kg, Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) executive director Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) criticized the legislature yesterday for delaying review of the proposals until the last three days of this legislative session.
“Suppose the lawmakers take exactly 10 minutes to review each proposal in this pile of papers in front of me. It would take them 19 sleepless days to finish reviewing all of them, but they’re trying to do it within three days” Ho said at a news conference at the group’s office yesterday.
While the legislature had close to five months between the start of the session in September and the end of the session on Tuesday to review bills and central government budgets for the next fiscal year, it waited until the last three days to begin the process.
“[The lawmakers] are certainly inefficient, unprofessional and lazy,” Ho said.
Chen Chien-fu (陳建甫), a CCW board member, accused the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of not serving as a watchdog for the public.
“With an absolute majority, the KMT passes everything that the government proposes — this is not what their job is about,” Chen said. “As lawmakers belonging to the ruling party, they should be very careful about proposals and bills submitted by the government.”
Ho, on the other hand, thinks that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is not working hard enough as opposition.
“The DPP is a minority, but this is no excuse,” Ho said at the news conference. “If they went after inappropriate legislative proposals like they did [former KMT legislator] Diane Lee’s [李慶安] dual citizenship case, things would have been a lot better, and they would have won applause from the public.”
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
The cosponsors of a new US sanctions package targeting Russia on Thursday briefed European allies and Ukraine on the legislation and said the legislation would also have a deterrent effect on China and curb its ambitions regarding Taiwan. The bill backed by US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports — targeting nations such as China and India, which account for about 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade, the bankroll of much of its war effort. Graham and Blumenthal told The Associated Press
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
RSS