The Nationalist Chinese Party (KMT) Central Evaluation and Discipline Committee has voted to suspend the party duties and privileges of Apollo Chen (陳學聖) for one year, following his dissenting vote on an amendment to the Land Administration Agents Act (地政士法) last month.
After receiving the news, Chen said: “Since I cast the vote, I must have the courage to bear the consequences.”
“After some time has passed, everyone will know that I stood up for the public with the right decision,” he added.
In a meeting yesterday, the committee passed the one-year suspension unanimously.
At the legislature’s extra session on Jan. 27 and Jan. 28, the KMT called on all party lawmakers to attend the vote and to approve the amendment to the Land Administration Agents Act. However, Apollo Chen did not toe the party line and cast a dissenting vote.
The KMT committee said that Chen had violated the party charter’s article by not following the resolution, policies and guiding principles of the party, and therefore it was forced to hand out the suspension.
The amendment to the Land Administration Agents Act was passed by the legislature on Jan. 3. It aims to ease land administration agents’ responsibility for registering real-estate sales prices by allowing them a second chance to revise a registration.
However, the Executive Yuan has decided the amendment could provide a loophole that might undermine the actual-price registration system for property transactions launched by the government on Aug. 1, 2012, to curb property speculation and increase transparency in the housing market.
In an attempt to fight the ongiong inflation of property prices, the government has required that buyers, real-estate brokers and land administration agents register the actual transaction prices of properties or face a fine.
The amended act was seen by the Executive Yuan as a loophole that could undermine the real-estate transaction price registration system.
Land administration agents made protests last month against the Executive Yuan’s request to rescind the amendment.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS