After the general budget cleared the legislative floor, Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday evening announced that the Cabinet is to resign en masse today.
Lai made the announcement at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei while thanking legislators for passing this year’s budget.
“The general budget has been passed. The time has come,” Lai said.
Photo: CNA
“I will hold an extraordinary Executive Yuan meeting tomorrow [Friday] to proceed with the Cabinet’s mass resignation and patiently wait for the president to announce a new premier,” he told reporters.
He expressed gratitude to Taiwanese for the support they have shown during his time as premier.
Prior to the announcement, Lai was warmly received by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers, many of whom hugged him. They later took a photograph together.
“I love you, premier,” several DPP lawmakers shouted.
Earlier, several rounds of votes were held for motions on which consensuses had not been reached during cross-caucus negotiations.
Motions tendered by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to freeze the budget of the Transitional Justice Commission, halve the budget of the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee and deny stipends for the Central Election Commission chairman and vice chairman were struck down by the DPP caucus, which has the legislative majority, in votes that stayed close to party lines.
Non-partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅), speaking on behalf of the People First Party, cited the Transitional Justice Commission’s “deviation from its course” as a reason to freeze its budget.
The commission should expedite efforts to exonerate people who had been unfairly or unjustly tried during the authoritarian era, but it has so far only acquitted 2,775 out of an estimated 13,400 such people, she said.
By putting forth proposals to replace currency bearing Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) image, the commission has gotten its priorities wrong, she said.
The only motion to suspend stipends that passed was a proposal targeting the Railway Bureau director-general over the Puyuma Express derailment in October last year proposed by the New Power Party (NPP) caucus.
The motion was carried by all four caucuses during negotiations and was passed yesterday without a vote.
NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) in a speech criticized the bureau and the Taiwan Railways Administration, saying they repeatedly lied to lawmakers about what technical issues might have caused the derailment.
The families of the victims are still waiting for the truth, he added.
The general budget for fiscal year 2019 is now NT$1.99 trillion (US$64.65 billion) after NT$24 billion, or 1.19 percent, was trimmed.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
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The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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