President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday said that the public can judge for themselves whether the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) had squandered the entire legislative session by not reviewing the general budget and passing only bills benefiting certain people or organizations.
Lai made the remarks before inspecting the Taipei Beimen Post Office ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, when he was asked about the two opposition parties repeatedly blocking bids to review the Executive Yuan’s general budget and special budget plans.
The KMT and TPP hold a majority in the legislature, yet they neither reviewed the general budget plan nor the special defense budget plan this past legislative session. Instead, they did the best they could to pass bills that would spare KMT Legislator Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恆) from serving jail time, allow CTi News to return to the cable TV system and enable the KMT to reclaim assets that it acquired through unjust means,” Lai said. “People can judge if this is reasonable.”
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Asked whether the Presidential Office and the Executive Yuan would not sign or countersign the controversial bills — as the Executive Yuan did with the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) last year — the president said the Cabinet has publicly stated that it would consult experts to handle this matter in a legal and constitutional manner.
“As president, I have no criticisms against Legislative Yuan Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜). I am only pleading with him to consider the long-term development of national security, the economy and public welfare, and facilitate the passage of the proposed general budget and special defense budget. This is the responsibility of legislators and the legislative speaker,” he said.
Yen was convicted of corruption for embezzling assistants’ salaries and was sentenced by the High Court to seven years and 10 months in prison. The sentence can be appealed.
TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said it is unfair to the public when the president of a country takes the lead in spreading false information.
Past amendments pushed by the Democratic Progressive Party — such as the decriminalization of the discretionary state affairs fund — are what constitute “tailor-made legislation for specific people,” he said.
KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said the Cabinet chose not to allocate a budget to raise the wages of the military, police and firefighters while at the same time urging the legislature to “rush the review and passage” of its budget proposals.
He likened the situation to a restaurant serving undercooked food and then blaming customers for eating too slowly.
Such a disreputable business should be rejected by all consumers, he said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
ANNUAL EVENT: Two massive Pokemon balloons are to be set up in Daan Park, with an event zone operating from 10am to 6pm This year’s Taipei Floral Picnic is to be held at Daan Park today and tomorrow, featuring an exclusive Pokemon Go event, a themed food market, a coffee rave picnic area and stage performances, the Taipei Department of Information and Tourism said yesterday. Two massive Pokemon balloons are to be set up in the park as attractions, with an exclusive event zone operating from 10am to 6pm, it said. Participants who complete designated tasks on-site would have a chance to receive limited-edition souvenirs, it added. People could also try the newly launched game Pokemon Pokopia in the trial area, the department said. Three PokeStops are
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
RSS