The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday accused the Legislative Yuan of using police force against lawmakers when hundreds of officers were assigned to protect Control Yuan presidential nominee Chen Chu (陳菊) during a scuffle in the legislative compound on Tuesday.
Chen, who resigned as Presidential Office secretary-general in May, is a civilian, but her security detail on Tuesday was comparable to that of the president, KMT caucus whip Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) told a news conference in Taipei.
This shows the Democratic Progressive Party’s disregard for the law and its mentality that it can do as it pleases, he said.
Photo: CNA
Apart from officers from the Special Police Sixth Headquarters in charge of guarding the legislature, highway, airport and harbor police were reportedly on the scene to protect Chen from protesting KMT lawmakers, which suggests that the order likely did not come from National Police Agency Director-
General Chen Ja-chin (陳家欽), but “higher up,” he said.
Voters, not police, should decide what actions to take on lawmakers, who should bear the responsibility for their actions, he said.
KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Yi-hua (林奕華) said that there were four phalanxes of police between her and Chen Chu, who was just a leader of a DPP faction and not a government official.
DPP lawmakers blocking their KMT counterparts from entering the legislative chamber is seen as a strategy in the battle between political parties, but police officers are not legally mandated to intervene in the conflict between lawmakers, she said.
The last time that the legislature used police force against lawmakers was in 1991, before the universal suffrage of lawmakers, and Tuesday’s incident suggests that the nation has regressed to a “police state,” she said.
KMT Legislator Yang Chiung-ying (楊瓊瓔) asked Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) to clarify his stance on deploying police to curtail the rights of lawmakers discharging their duties.
The KMT caucus was deliberately blurring the definition of “use of police force,” Legislative Yuan Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) said.
As several assistants to lawmakers joined the scuffle at the back door of the legislative chamber, officers were obliged to ensure a safe and clear passage for lawmakers, which had nothing to do with “using force,” Lin said.
Citing the Rules on the Duties of Legislative Yuan Guards (立法院警衛勤務規則), he said that police officers are allowed to enter the legislative chamber or meeting rooms at the request of the legislative speaker or committee chair that they discharge their duties as guards and protect lawmakers from harm.
The rules allow the Legislative Yuan to request reinforcements from police agencies to allow lawmakers to exercise their authority and ensure the safety of personnel in the Legislative Yuan compound, he said.
DPP caucus secretary-general Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱) said that his caucus would confront the KMT head-on tomorrow when the legislature holds its vote on Control Yuan nominees as scheduled.
You is expected to announce the schedule for tomorrow’s legislative meeting — comprising solely of the vote on Control Yuan nominees — as planned, and if the KMT objects, it can demand that it be put to a vote, Chung said.
If KMT lawmakers continue to occupy the speaker’s rostrum, DPP lawmakers would have to physically “remove” them as they have done many times in the past, he said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift