The Legislative Yuan should initiate the final steps to abolish the Taiwan Provincial Government to follow up on a planned elimination of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, protesters said yesterday.
About a dozen members affiliated with the Economic Democracy Union and several other groups protested outside a Legislative Yuan side gate to demand that the Provincial Government’s budget be eliminated during the upcoming legislative session, followed by formal legal amendments to legislate it out of existence next year.
They also called for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to make abolishing the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) a platform plank during the next round of legislative elections.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“We hope to make the sovereign power of Taiwanese collide with our Republic of China Constitution,” union spokesman Chien Nien-yu (簡年佑) said. “Legal changes by the Legislative Yuan can challenge inappropriate constitutional restrictions and create new energy for a new constitution or sweeping reform.”
The Republic of China Constitution was adopted by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government in Nanjing in 1947, with amendments restricting its application to the nation’s “free area” following the KMT’s defeat in the Chinese Civil War.
The Constitution mandates the existence of a provincial government while allowing for legislation to define its specific function and organization.
In practice, the provincial government has been “frozen” and largely non-functional since 1998, when it was drastically downsized.
Protesters yesterday compared it to an “appendix.”
“Even though the provincial government has been frozen for almost 20 years, it still employees more than 100 people across several different bodies, while wasting NT$240 million [US$7.98 million] in taxpayer dollars last year,” said union secretary-general Chen Kuan-yu (陳冠宇), who also announced plans to burn a pile of paper “gold ingots” at a vigil at Liberty Square on Monday night.
Protesters said the vigil date was selected because it corresponded with the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the Act Governing Relations between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area.
“It would not be enough just to amend the act to change references to ‘mainland area’ to ‘China’ and references to the ‘Taiwan area’ to ‘our country,’” Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said, calling for restrictions on executive power to regulate Chinese trade and investment.
“The key characteristic of the act is numerous blank checks allowing the executive branch to do as it pleases on a variety of issues where they should be governed by specific laws,” Lai said.
The law should be replaced with a China Relations Act in the medium term to allow transition for articles governing behavior of Chinese citizens to be written into individual legislative acts to mirror passages “for foreigners.”
“Right now, Chinese are legally considered special nationals of the Republic of China, but we want to change that to their being considered special foreigners,” he said, adding that his group does not advocate using a referendum to abolish the act.
Referendums have “more important uses,” he said.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
NUMBERS IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
RSS