The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of playing a trick on it after the ruling party was caught by surprise when it found that a DPP legislator has set the first committee review of the cross-strait service trade agreement for this week.
“Given that we have acquiesced to the opposition parties’ demands that the agreement be subjected to a line-by-line review and subsequently voted on article by article, the DPP should not have played this trick on us,” KMT caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said yesterday.
DPP Legislator Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), one of the two conveners of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, on Friday scheduled a review of the agreement to take place on Wednesday and Thursday.
According to legislative precedent, the committee’s other convener, KMT Legislator Chang Ching-chung (張慶忠), should take charge of the pact’s review because it was the KMT which advocated the agreement, not the DPP, Lin said.
The caucus whip said he could not predict how the DPP would handle the review process during the committee stage, but that he knew the KMT faces an uphill battle in pushing through the service trade agreement if its political archrival has control over the proceedings.
The ruling party has summoned all of its lawmakers to a caucus meeting tomorrow to hash out response strategies for all possible outcomes of the review, Lin said.
Chen yesterday vowed that he would take a neutral stance and would not seek to dominate the proceedings.
“The cross-strait trade agreement has not been placed on the committee’s agenda before. The committee’s convener is mandated to handle any item that has not been taken care of by the other convener,” Chen said.
Chang said that what the DPP really wanted was to kill the agreement and that it had no intention of helping its ratification.
If the DPP insists on controlling the pact’s review during the committee phase, the KMT should argue that the agreement be allowed to pass the committee stage automatically because the review is in violation of regulations stipulating that it be completed within three months after the plenary session assigns it to the committee, Chang said.
Former minister of economic affairs Yiin Chii-ming (尹啟銘) had previously made the argument based on Article 61 of the Act Governing the legislative Yuan’s Powers (立法院職權行使法).
If ratified by the legislature, the cross-strait trade pact would open up 64 of the nation’s service sub-sectors to Chinese investment, including printing, tourism, restaurants, packaging, delivery service, car rentals, advertisement and the hair styling and beauty industry.
This compares with the 80 service sectors that China will open up to Taiwanese investment.
Since Taipei and Beijing signed the agreement in June last year, numerous public officials and members of the public have raised concerns about what they call the opaque process of its signing and criticized the government for failing to consult with the public before inking the pact.
In response to these concerns, the KMT in December last year agreed to hold a series of 16 public hearings before the line-by-line review of the agreement begins.
The last of these hearings is scheduled to be held tomorrow.
People can take the Taipei MRT free of charge if they access it at Nanjing Sanmin Station or Taipei Arena Station on the Green Line between 12am and 6am on Jan. 1, the Taipei Department of Transportation said on Friday, outlining its plans to ease crowding during New Year’s events in the capital. More than 200,000 people are expected to attend New Year’s Eve events in Taipei, with singer A-mei (張惠妹) performing at the Taipei Dome and the city government’s New Year’s Eve party at Taipei City Hall Plaza, the department said. As people have tended to use the MRT’s Blue or
Civil society groups yesterday protested outside the Legislative Yuan, decrying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) efforts to pass three major bills that they said would seriously harm Taiwan’s democracy, and called to oust KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁). It was the second night of the three-day “Bluebird wintertime action” protests in Taipei, with organizers announcing that 8,000 people attended. Organized by Taiwan Citizen Front, the Economic Democracy Union (EDU) and a coalition of civil groups, about 6,000 people began a demonstration in front of KMT party headquarters in Taipei on Wednesday, organizers said. For the third day, the organizers asked people to assemble
Taipei is participating in Osaka’s Festival of Lights this year, with a 3m-tall bubble tea light installation symbolizing Taiwan’s bubble tea culture. The installation is designed as a bubble tea cup and features illustrations of Taipei’s iconic landmarks, such as Taipei 101, the Red House and North Gate, as well as soup dumplings and the matchmaking deity the Old Man Under the Moon (月下老人), affectionately known as Yue Lao (月老). Taipei and Osaka have collaborated closely on tourism and culture since Taipei first participated in the festival in 2018, the Taipei City Department of Information and Tourism said. In February, Osaka represented
Taiwanese professional baseball should update sports stadiums and boost engagement to enhance fans’ experience, Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) commissioner Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview on Friday. The league has urged Farglory Group and the Taipei City Government to improve the Taipei Dome’s outdated equipment, including relatively rudimentary television and sound systems, and poor technology, he said. The Tokyo Dome has markedly better television and sound systems, despite being 30 years old, because its managers continually upgraded its equipment, Tsai said. In contrast, the Taipei Dome lacked even a room for referees
RSS