Several student groups are planning to mark the one-year anniversary of the signing of the cross-strait service trade agreement with an event aimed at warning the government against another attempt to push through controversial bills during the Legislative Yuan’s current extra session.
The service trade agreement was signed in Shanghai on June 21 last year.
The deal had sparked strong objections even before the pact was signed and eventually led to a three-week occupation of the legislature’s main chamber earlier this year after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) tried to rush the pact through the review process.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
The Black Island Nation Youth Front, which was established last year after the pact was signed, and the groups Democracy Dautin and the Democracy Kuroshio, which were set up this year, yesterday said they were planning an evening event outside the Legislative Yuan compound tomorrow evening.
They said they want to remind the government about the public’s voice.
Three disputed bills — the draft for the free economic pilot zones program, the bill for a cross-strait agreements oversight mechanism and the service trade agreement itself — are crammed into the final week of the three-week-long extra session, which suggests a possible bid to rush them through, Democracy Dautin member Wu Cheng (吳崢) said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
“Juxtaposing [the latter two bills] for a simultaneous review is in itself in violation of what the public has been demanding, which is to first institute an oversight mechanism before reviewing any cross-strait agreements, including the service trade pact,” Wu said.
Dennis Wei (魏揚), from the Black Island Nation Youth Front, said that the KMT tried to railroad the service trade pact through during an extra legislative extra session in July last year.
He then paraphrased a Karl Marx quote when Marx was amending a quotation by G.W.F. Hegel.
“Marx wrote that ‘great world-historical facts and personages occur’ twice; ‘the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.’ Although [President] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is not a great personage, nor is ramming through the bills anything close to a great event, the attempts to force through the pact last year and this year are both tragedies and farces,” Wei said.
Democracy Dautin convener Lee Chun-ta (李俊達) said that from the service trade pact to the free economic pilot zones, “all of what we see in Ma’s economic policies is deregulation, without providing protection for labor and the environment.”
The Ma administration is only interested in GDP growth, ignoring the people’s livelihood and the failure of its economic policies, Lee said.
The public should closely follow the legislature’s action over the next two weeks to see how the bills are handled, Lee said.
“We will continue monitoring the extra session and will take action if necessary during this period to keep those bills at bay,” Democracy Kuroshio representative Hsu Yung (徐雍) said.
The KMT’s caucus whip said it would be almost impossible to finish reviewing the bills in this extra session, “so it is a mystery why the bills needed be placed on the extra session agenda” to begin with, Wei said.
“Nobody knows whether they [the KMT] will launch a surprise attack. The event on Saturday is to maintain the dynamics and exert pressure on it,” he said.
The event is to run from 6pm to 10pm and will not run into the next day, the organizers said.
The student representatives were asked if their groups were planning anything during next week’s visit to Taipei by Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), director of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
“The Mainland Affairs Council has no right to sign agreements with China behind closed doors. The oversight mechanism is aimed at preventing such scenarios. Whether we will take action depends on the council’s moves,” Lee said.
The coast guard drove away 567 Chinese boats and seized seven illegally operating in Taiwanese waters in the first six months of this year, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. They mostly operated near Kinmen and Penghu counties, resulting in fines totaling NT$1.7 million (US$52,440), it said. Three ships — two near Kinmen County and one near Penghu County — were detained in January for illegally crossing the border, while one ship each was detained near Kinmen in February and Penghu in March respectively, it said. The ship seized near Penghu in January was the Yun Ao (雲澳), detained by the CGA’s
Military photovoltaic projects have been found to have used Chinese-made devices blacklisted by the government, including Huawei Technologies Co routers, the Ministry of National Defense’s Armaments Bureau said on Thursday. An ongoing investigation has identified the illegal use of 128 current transformers, two routers and a data reader at the Hungchailin Army Base, Pinghai Navy Base and Tri-Service General Hospital’s Songshan branch, it said. The devices were manufactured in the Chinese factories of German solar energy equipment supplier SMA Solar Technology, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Delta Electronics Co, Chinese electronics manufacturer Huawei and Taiwanese industrial PC maker Advantech Co, the bureau said. The bureau’s
The entire Alishan Forest Railway line is to reopen for the first time in 15 years on Saturday, with tickets to go on sale at 2pm today. The historic railway from Chiayi to Alishan (阿里山) is finally set to reopen after the completion of the final No. 42 tunnel, Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office Deputy Director-General Chou Heng-kai (周恆凱) said. It is to run on a new timetable, with four trains daily, he said. The 9am train is to depart from Chiayi Railway Station bound for Shizilu Station (十字路), while the 10am train departing from Chiayi is to go all the
FLU CONTINUES: Hospitals reported 101,091 visits for flu-like illnesses last week, while 68 severe cases and 16 flu-related deaths were also reported, the CDC said The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported 932 hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and 64 related deaths for last week, adding that the number of people who had contracted new SARS-CoV-2 subvariants KP.2 and LB.1 has increased. The number of people hospitalized due to COVID-19 increased from 815 in the previous week to 932 last week, while 90 percent of the 64 deceased were aged 65 or older, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. JN.1 was still the dominant variant among local and imported cases in the past four weeks, while KP.2 was the second-most common, Lin said. Cases with the LB.1 subvariant