President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should launch a series of reforms during her second term, focusing on amending the Constitution and housing issues, the New Power Party (NPP) said yesterday.
As Tsai is set to be sworn in this morning for her second term, the party and several experts have made policy proposals on constitutional amendments, judicial reforms, housing issues, the media and technology, NPP members said at a news conference in Taipei.
The reforms it is proposing are the promises that Tsai had made before starting her first term, so she should fulfill those promises in her second term, NPP Chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The NPP hopes that the Constitution could be amended so that the voting age could be lowered from 20 to 18, Hsu said.
Even though the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) controls more than half of the Legislative Yuan’s seats, Tsai would still face enormous challenges in amending the Constitution, considering the conflicts between the DPP and opposition parties, he said.
“If the public has reached a consensus that the voting age should be 18, the president has the responsibility to forge dialogues between all parties and helping all parties reach a consensus,” Hsu said.
NPP legislative caucus whip Chiu Hsien-chih (邱顯智) said Tsai should try to enforce the conclusions reached at the National Conference on Judicial Reforms, including enhancing the quality of the judicial system and improving the work environment for judges, prosecutors and court marshals.
Housing right advocate Peng Yang-kae (彭揚凱) said Tsai was heading in the right direction when she proposed housing reforms four years ago, but she did not deliver.
She should quickly deliver a new system for registering the actual selling price of real estate and levy higher taxes on homes not lived in by their owners, Peng said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
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