The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) plans to propose constitutional amendments to require the president to give an annual state of the nation address to the Legislative Yuan and for the appointment of the premier to be approved by lawmakers, while working with other parties to ensure that the Control Yuan and the Examination Yuan can operate independently, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said yesterday.
Presiding over the weekly meeting of the KMT’s Central Standing Committee, Chiang cited survey results from a my-formosa.com poll that found that 71.5 percent of the respondents support the idea of an annual presidential address on national policy issues and the economy to the legislature, while 62.8 percent said the president’s nomination of a premier should be approved by the legislature.
The same poll also found that 43.9 percent of respondents felt that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has hurt the nation’s democratic system by the way it handled the nomination and approval of new Control Yuan members, he said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
About 52 percent said incoming Control Yuan president Chen Chu (陳菊) would not represent the people, he added.
“The basis for our discussions about the constitutional amendments should be to defend our democracy and crack down on the abuse of human rights,” Chiang said.
Under the Republic of China’s political system, the honor of the president is based on their exercising self-discipline, rather than on a balance of powers between the branches of government, he said.
As such, the president has many executive privileges, but bears no responsibility, he said.
The way the Control Yuan nominations were handled shows how a president can destroy the balance of power by a lack of self-discipline, he added.
While the KMT would petition the Council of Grand Justices for a ruling on the constitutionality of the approval of new Control Yuan member, it also plans to conduct a comprehensive review of the Constitution to ensure that the nation’s political system can hold the president accountable, prevent the abuse of executive rights and has a clear separation of powers, Chiang said.
The KMT needs to find the most advantageous position between the US and China, and develop its relations with both nations using a flexible foreign policy, given the conflicts between them, he said.
“President Tsai Ying-wen (蔡英文) had said that we should not forget we are one of the chess players as well. We want to remind Tsai that she should cautiously tread in diplomatic waters. Her priority should be an independent Republic of China and the nation’s 23 million people,” Chiang said.
“She should avoid turning Taiwan into a bargaining chip between the two countries — or an abandoned child,” the KMT chairman added.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater