The Presidential Office yesterday declined calls from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) politicians for President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to declare a state of emergency over the COVID-19 situation, saying that any contingencies can be addressed by existing legislation.
KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) told a KMT Central Standing Committee meeting that the government should consider issuing emergency presidential orders to provide a legal basis for local governments to arrange or call for disease prevention items and also resolve any questions regarding restrictions imposed on the public.
New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) of the KMT said that the government should bar Taiwanese from traveling to countries listed in a Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) level 3 “warning” travel advisory, bar visitors from those nations from entering Taiwan within 30 days of their nations being listed and halt the importation of foreign workers during the pandemic.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
TPP Legislator Jang Chyi-lu (張其祿) said that restrictions under Act 7 of the Special Act on COVID-19 Prevention, Relief and Restoration (嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎防治及紓困振興特別條例) are questionable and could be infringing on constitutionally guaranteed rights.
However, such restrictions are well within the parameters of a state of emergency decree, so instead of applying for a constitutional interpretation or filing for an amendment to clarify whether such restrictions are legal, Tsai should just issue an emergency decree and remove all legal doubts, Jang said.
The Presidential Office said emergency decrees should only be issued in cases of national emergencies or during a financial tumult that would otherwise lack a legal basis.
Under the Constitution, any emergency decree issued by the president must be ratified by the Legislative Yuan, the office said.
The post-SARS amendment to the Communicable Disease Control Act (傳染病防治法) and the special act have provided legal bases for nearly all disease prevention efforts, office spokesperson Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said, adding that an emergency decree was not issued during the SARS outbreak.
Since martial law was lifted in 1987, a state of emergency has only be declared once, after the 921 Earthquake in 1999, Chang said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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