The President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration yesterday unveiled a draft bill on establishing an oversight mechanism for bilateral agreements with China, as students opposing the cross-strait service trade pact have been demanding, but stressed that it would have no implication for the controversial service deal.
The student-led activists against the service sector liberalization are also demanding that the Executive Yuan withdraw the trade pact from the legislature and suspend its legislative review until the mechanism is up and running.
Four days after Ma expressed his support for the protesters’ demand that the supervision of cross-strait agreements be institutionalized at an international press conference on Mar. 29, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) briefed members of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Central Standing Committee on the details of the draft legislation to set up the monitoring mechanism.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The draft legislation combines the four-stage communication guidelines that the ruling party proposed in February to bolster legislative supervision of cross-strait treaties with a two-stage national security screening mechanism established by the council in January.
The bill is due to be discussed at a Cabinet meeting today.
The communication guidelines would require the Executive Yuan to brief the legislative speaker and deputy speaker, all legislative caucuses, as well as any relevant legislative committees, on the proposed contents of a cross-strait agreement during the issue formation stage, the first of four phases.
In the second stage, the communication phase, the legislature would be routinely updated on the progress of negotiations, while in the third, pre-signing phase, the Executive Yuan would have to brief lawmakers on the important details of the accord, its potential benefits and the ways in which it is to be enacted.
Finally, the post-signing phase would see the Executive Yuan providing the legislature with special reports on the achievements of the cross-strait agreement upon request.
Meanwhile, the national security screening mechanism would require pending cross-strait pacts to be sent to the Cabinet for review first before being “assessed thoroughly” by a group of academics selected by the National Security Council to ensure that they would not negatively impact society, national defense and security through their views.
“The bill is part of the government’s effort to promote transparent cross-strait negotiations and to respond positively to the public’s call for the institutionalization of a mechanism to monitor future cross-strait pacts,” Executive Yuan spokesman Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) said.
However, Sun added that the bill would “have no bearing” on the service trade pact with China, a stance in accordance with Ma’s repeated insistence that the agreement be exempt from the retroactive application of any future laws enacted to monitor cross-strait treaties.
There are two main differences between the Cabinet’s version of the bill and that drawn up by the Democratic Front Against Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement — the one favored by the student-led demonstrators who have been occupying the legislature since Mar. 18 to try and block the service trade pact.
The first difference is that the civic group’s version would entitle the legislature to revise and add new articles to the proposed contents of a cross-strait agreement during the pre-negotiation phase.
Second, during the pre-signing stage, civic groups would be allowed to conduct their own impact assessment reports on proposed bilateral agreements.
If their conclusions differ significantly from those reached by the Cabinet, the legislature would then have the right to demand the government renegotiate the pact.
A third discrepancy between the two versions was resolved when the government last night agreed to the stipulations in the group’s proposal that a cross-strait agreement can be revised after it is signed and that it will renegotiate terms with Beijing if the legislature fails to ratify a pact.
The Thai government on Friday announced that Taiwanese would be allowed to stay in the country for up to 60 days per entry, under the Southeast Asian country’s visa-free program starting from today. Taiwan is among 93 countries included in the Thai visa-waiver program, which has been expanded from 57 countries, with the visa-exempt entry extended from 30 to 60 days. After taking office last year, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin has vowed to grant more visa waivers to foreign travelers as part of efforts to stimulate tourism. The expanded visa-waiver program was on Friday signed by Thai Minister of the Interior Anutin
BAIL APPEALS: The former vice premier was ordered to be held incommunicado despite twice being granted bail and paying a total of NT$12 million in bond The Taoyuan District Court yesterday ordered the detention of former vice premier Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦), who is being investigated for alleged corruption while serving as Taoyuan mayor from December 2014 to December 2022, and that he be held incommunicado. The court made the ruling during a bail hearing after prosecutors appealed its bail ruling twice. Cheng on Saturday was released after posting bail of NT$5 million (US$153,818). However, after prosecutors lodged an appeal, the High Court on Monday revoked the original ruling and ordered the Taoyuan District Court to hold another bail hearing. On Tuesday, the district court granted bail to Cheng a second
PEACE AND SECURITY: China’s military ambitions present ‘the greatest strategic challenge to Japan and the world, Japan’s annual defense white paper said yesterday Japan yesterday warned that China risked escalating tensions with Taiwan with an increase in military exercises that appeared aimed in part at readying Beijing’s forces for a possible invasion. Japan’s annual assessment of security threats, including those posed by China, North Korea and Russia, comes as Taiwan closely monitors Chinese People’s Liberation Army air and sea exercises, including one with the Shandong aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean. The drills are the latest in a series including maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait last year that a senior US general said would be key to any invasion. “Because of that increase in military activity,
HAN KUANG: The exercises, which are to run from July 22 to 26, will feature unscripted war games and a decentralized command and control structure, military officers said The armed forces would for the first time test new rules of engagement (ROE) at this month’s annual Han Kuang exercises, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday. The exercises, which are to run from July 22 to 26, will feature unscripted war games, and a decentralized command and control structure, military officers told a news conference in Taipei. ROE cards would be issued to select combat troops to test their ability to function without tight control, they said. The most recent edition of the rules was published last year, they said. One of the cards’ two templates identifies enemy targets that soldiers