After obstructing proceedings on the legislative floor on April 25 and on Tuesday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday agreed to refer the draft bill for a special statute on a referendum on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant to a standing committee for deliberation, rather than a direct second reading on the legislative floor.
As the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) continues to insist that the government’s resolution to suspend the construction of the plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) is not a major policy change and thereby refuses the DPP’s request that Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) deliver a special report on the issue to the legislature, a cross-party negotiation again failed to reach a consensus.
Following the DPP’s compromise to add the budget report on the powser plant to the agenda of next Wednesday’s Economics Committee meeting, Jiang took to the podium for a question-and-answer session yesterday.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
DPP Legislator Wu Ping-jui (吳秉叡) said the Executive Yuan would need to elucidate on the plant’s budget “for the controversy to come to an official end.”
KMT caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said the ruling party had been clear that construction at the plant is to “be suspended and the No. 1 reactor sealed” and that the DPP could question the premier during the question-and-answer session instead of requiring a special report.
DPP Legislator Su Chen-ching (蘇震清) called the Executive Yuan’s talk of “concession” into question, saying that if its resolution is not a major policy change, but merely “one that follows the conclusion reached by a cross-party negotiation in the legislature in February” as Jiang has said, “how is this a concession made on the part of the government?”
Jiang said that the difference lies in the time frame for a possible referendum. While the negotiation considered the possibility of a referendum being held immediately after the safety inspection is completed, “the latest resolution has decided to seal the No. 1 reactor in order to wait for a possible referendum in the future.”
The cross-party negotiation concluded that no additional budget would be added for the fuel rods to be inserted until a referendum has been held, he said.
Both Su and DPP Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) also brought up the fact that Jiang had refused to vote in a referendum on the issue of arms procurement in 2004.
As the nation’s existing regulations on referendums require the participation of half of eligible voters for it to be valid, mobilizing people not to vote can be a convenient way to veto the proposition proposed. How the proposition is phrased, as in affirmative or negative statement, can be decisive, they said.
Jiang said he did not vote in 2004 because he believed the referendum, as well as the proposition, was “nonsense.”
Chiu said Jiang’s refusal to vote exemplified the problem of the existing referendum threshold, by which a referendum can be easily manipulated.
DPP Legislator Pan Men-an (潘孟安) asked Jiang about the possibility of differentiating referendums on the constitutional level from those pertaining to public policies.
Jiang said that the referendum prerequisites for controversies on the constitutional level “are even more rigorous” and said that the issue of the threshold could be discussed for a local referendum, but that the restrictions for a national referendum should not be relaxed.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS