Along with the nation using “Taiwan” in international organizations, a group of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers on Thursday said that they would prioritize the “normalization of Taiwan as a nation” in work done by the Constitutional Amendment Committee during this legislative session.
They said they would propose to amend clauses in the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China so that, for example, Article 10 would read: “The State shall promote the use of ‘Taiwan’ when engaging in foreign affairs, for joining international organizations, for participating in international meetings, and to take up responsibility for international humanitarian assistance.”
They added that, to clarify, they would change the supplementary text to read: “This is for the protection of Taiwan’s national sovereignty and security, and conforming to the current reality of the people’s national identity and of current international relations.”
Last week, Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) said that cross-party talks decided to allocate the committee’s 39 seats based on each party’s proportion of legislative seats, with 22 seats for the DPP, 14 for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), two for the Taiwan People’s Party and one for the New Power Party.
The DPP had decided to reserve two of its seats for independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) and Taiwan Statebuilding Party Legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟).
Currently, Article 4 of the Constitution states: “The territory of the Republic of China according to its existing national boundaries shall not be altered except by resolution of the National Assembly.”
DPP representatives on the committee would amend it to read: “The territory of the Republic of China shall be according to the regions under governance of the Constitution” to reflect the Taiwanese government’s de facto control within current national boundaries.
In the past legislative session, DPP Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) questioned wording in the Constitution, saying: “Relations between Taiwan and China no longer have the ‘unification of the state’ as the ultimate aim, therefore such wording should be removed from the Constitution, to reflect the political realities and to remove restraints for our national development.”
Another proposal is to add a clause that reads: “The national flag, national anthem and national symbol shall be established by law, and not restricted by Article 6 of the Constitution.”
Article 6 states: “The national flag of the Republic of China shall be of red ground with a blue sky and a white sun in the upper left corner.”
The change would allow legislators to make changes to the national flag, national anthem and national symbol by drafting a new law, without needing to amend the Constitution, DPP lawmakers said.
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