Independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) yesterday in Taipei launched the Open Parliament Partnership Action Plan in a bid to promote transparency in the Legislative Yuan, increase exchanges with Open Government Partnership (OGP) member states and raise the nation’s international profile.
Citing as examples a “mask map” jointly designed by Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) and members of the public, and Citizen’s Congress Watch’s routine perusal of recordings of legislative question-and-answer sessions on Parliamentary TV to rate lawmakers’ performance, Lim told a news conference at the Legislative Yuan that the public sector could team up with the private sector to use similar technologies to conduct topic-based analyses using data made available by the legislature, which he said would help usher in a new era of democracy.
This would bring the legislature in line with the targets set by the OGP — whose annual meetings are attended by himself and Tang — boosting the nation’s chances of securing OGP membership, he said.
Photo: CNA
China, with its opaque government, is not very influential in the partnership and cannot ostracize the nation forever, Lim added.
Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) said that he supports the plan.
The Open Parliament e-Network is a spinoff of the OGP and aims to promote openness in parliaments, allow easy access to parliamentary data and digitize parliaments, and the nation should work toward these goals, he said.
The goals conform to his own ideals for the Legislative Yuan: to improve its operations and functions, consolidate democratic values and engage with parliaments of other nations, You said.
An open Legislative Yuan would further boost the nation’s international visibility and status, which would contribute to the goal of making Taiwan a “normalized” nation, he said.
Members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the New Power Party and the Taiwan People’s Party also attended the launch ceremony.
The government should be transparent regarding its decisionmaking process, from cross-caucus talks to appointments and nominations of officials, KMT caucus whip Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) said, adding that the only information that the government should not disclose are state secrets.
The more open and transparent information is, the more developed a democratic nation’s society is, he said.
Although Taiwan is not a member of the OGP, Tang last year at the group’s summit said that the government would draw up an open government action plan on its own initiative, National Development Council Deputy Minister Kao Shien-quei (高仙桂) said.
The plan seeks to release more government data, boost civic participation in policymaking, introduce a mechanism for dialogue between ethnic groups, crack down on money laundering and promote a clean government, she said, adding that practicing these principles would boost the nation’s international space.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening 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) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS