Lawmakers yesterday clashed over supervisory articles governing negotiations with China during a question-and-answer session with Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Katharine Chang (張小月) at the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee.
“I feel that the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] is not taking a sincere swing at this issue,” said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator William Tseng (曾銘宗), who, as committee coconvener, has scheduled a review of draft bills to begin tomorrow.
The MAC’s and the DPP caucus’ positions on the urgency of the review are contradictory, he said, questioning whether the council and the caucus were playing “good cop, bad cop” on the issue.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
“Even though the council says it attaches great importance to the issue, you have unbelievably refused to put forth your own version of the articles,” he said. “Your own draft version of the articles is supposed to stake out your position, strategy and policy direction, but you have not done any of this. Is that not strange?”
“I do not see the council taking any real action, other than coming here to read from a script,” KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) said.
Rebutting the allegations, Chang said: “I take a different view because we have consistently maintained that we hope the legislature can pass supervisory articles guaranteeing openness, transparency and civic participation.”
“We will not present our own version because we support the DPP caucus’ version,” she said, adding it would be inappropriate for the council to present a draft on how the legislature should supervise negotiations conducted by the council.
“As an executive body, all we would end up doing is insisting on our administrative autonomy, while the legislature is concerned with its right to supervise,” she said.
“At this stage, the supervisory articles are not an urgent issue, because of the overall state of cross-strait relations,” said DPP Legislator Pasuya Yao (姚文智), who serves as the committee’s DPP coconvener.
“It is not that the council does not want to hold discussions or that the DPP does not want to hold a review, but the reality is that it is going to be a while before this kind of law would actually be put to use,” he said.
The trade in services agreement has been shelved due to domestic controversy and there is little space for renegotiation because China has refused to contact President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, he said.
Passage of supervisory articles was a key demand of the Sunflower movement, which saw student activists occupy the legislature in 2014 to protest the agreement negotiated by the then-KMT government.
ANOTHER EMERGES: The CWA yesterday said this year’s fourth storm of the typhoon season had formed in the South China Sea, but was not expected to affect Taiwan Tropical Storm Gaemi has intensified slightly as it heads toward Taiwan, where it is expected to affect the country in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 8am yesterday, the 120km-radius storm was 800km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving at 9kph northwest, the agency said. A sea warning for Gaemi could be issued tonight at the earliest, it said, adding that the storm is projected to be closest to Taiwan on Wednesday or Thursday. Gaemi’s potential effect on Taiwan remains unclear, as that would depend on its direction, radius and intensity, forecasters said. Former Weather Forecast
As COVID-19 cases in Japan have been increasing for 10 consecutive weeks, people should get vaccinated before visiting the nation, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. The centers reported 773 hospitalizations and 124 deaths related to COVID-19 in Taiwan last week. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Guo Hung-wei (郭宏偉) on Tuesday said the number of weekly COVID-19 cases reported in Japan has been increasing since mid-May and surpassed 55,000 cases from July 8 to July 14. The average number of COVID-19 patients at Japan’s healthcare facilities that week was also 1.39 times that of the week before and KP.3 is the dominant
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) working group for Taiwan-related policies is likely to be upgraded to a committee-level body, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. As Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is increasingly likely to upgrade the CCP’s Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs, Taiwanese authorities should prepare by researching Xi and the CCP, the report said. At the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP, which ended on Thursday last week, the party set a target of 2029 for the completion of some tasks, meaning that Xi is likely preparing to
US-CHINA TRADE DISPUTE: Despite Beijing’s offer of preferential treatment, the lure of China has dimmed as Taiwanese and international investors move out Japan and the US have become the favored destinations for Taiwanese graduates as China’s attraction has waned over the years, the Ministry of Labor said. According to the ministry’s latest income and employment advisory published this month, 3,215 Taiwanese university graduates from the class of 2020 went to Japan, surpassing for the first time the 2,881 graduates who went to China. A total of 2,300 graduates from the class of 2021 went to the US, compared with the 2,262 who went to China, the document showed. The trend continued for the class of 2023, of whom 1,460 went to Japan, 1,334 went to