An ad hoc Constitutional Amendment Committee that is to consider revisions to the Constitution was inaugurated at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday following the approval of the list of members.
The caucuses of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the opposition parties on Sept. 14 agreed to set up the committee amid calls for revisions to the Constitution, such as lowering the voting age from 20 to 18.
The 39 members of the committee were named after seats were allotted to parties based on their proportion of seats in the Legislative Yuan. As a result, the DPP has 22 seats, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) 14, the Taiwan People’s Party two and the New Power Party one.
However, the DPP ceded two of its seats to other lawmakers.
One went to independent Legislator Freddy Lim (林昶佐) and the other to Taiwan Statebuilding Party Legislator Chen Po-wei (陳柏惟).
Any proposed constitutional amendments would have to receive the backing of at least one-quarter of the 113 lawmakers to be forwarded to the Procedure Committee, which would then assign them to the Constitutional Amendment Committee for review.
Eleven such amendments were proposed during the most recent legislative session, including lowering the voting age from 20 to 18, and abolishing the Control Yuan and Examination Yuan.
For a proposal to be approved, it must be backed by at least half of the members of the Constitutional Amendment Committee present at a meeting attended by at least one-third of the members.
Should a proposal be passed by the committee, it would then have to be approved by at least three-quarters of the lawmakers at a meeting of the legislature attended by at least three-quarters of all lawmakers.
Should that threshold be met, the proposal would be put to a public referendum.
Taiwan does not exclude the possibility of having formal diplomatic relations with countries that also have formal ties with China, regardless of Beijing’s stance, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Sunday. There was speculation in 2012 that Honduras was attempting to have simultaneous diplomatic relations with Taiwan and China, an idea that then-minister of foreign affairs David Lin (林永樂) rejected. Honduras severed formal ties with Taiwan on Sunday morning after establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing. President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration has taken a more practical approach to relations with like-minded countries since assuming government in 2016. Previous administrations took the
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