The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has established a preliminary consensus on which constitutional amendments the party is likely to support once the amendments arrive for deliberation at the Legislative Yuan, KMT caucus whip Alex Fai (費鴻泰) said.
The KMT will support lowering the voting age to 18, to have the legislature ratify the appointment of the premier, and to include issues relating to climate change and animal protection in the Constitution, he said.
The post of premier was once filled by presidential nomination and ratified by the Legislative Yuan, but a 1997 Constitutional amendment allowed the president to fill the position without ratification.
Meanwhile, the KMT is opposed to the abolition of the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan, stating that the country should maintain the “separation of five powers.”
The KMT instead plans to put forth a proposal to increase the ratification threshold of Control Yuan and Examination Yuan members from half of all present legislators to two-thirds, which the KMT said could grant members of both more autonomy.
The preliminary consensus, reached at a party constitutional amendment task force meeting presided over by KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), is to be forward to the party’s Central Standing Committee for ratification before becoming the party’s official position.
The Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Central Standing Committee had on Oct. 27 approved its version of the constitutional amendments, which called for lowering the constitutional amendment threshold, lowering the voting age to 18, abolishing the Control Yuan and Examination Yuan, establishing a National Human Rights Committee and a National Auditing Committee, banning any sort of physical or emotional violence toward children or teenagers, and addressing a list of human rights-related issues.
An ad hoc Constitutional Amendment Committee that is to consider revisions to the Constitution was inaugurated at the Legislative Yuan on Oct. 6 last year.
Any proposed constitutional amendments would require the backing of at least one-quarter of the 113 lawmakers to be forwarded to the Procedure Committee, which would then be reviewed by the Constitutional Amendment Committee.
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 need to be approved by at least three-quarters of 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.
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