The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) should include forming a “constitutional reform committee” as a topic on the agenda of the Legislative Yuan’s extraordinary session, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) said yesterday.
Such a move would formally launch discussions about abolishing the Control Yuan and the Examination Yuan, Lin said.
Abolishing the two branches of government is the consensus among the ruling and opposition parties, and the DPP should heed public opinion by listing the issue as a topic for the extraordinary session, which is to begin on Monday next week, he said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
The DPP caucus has only proposed reviewing bills on a “citizen judge” lay judge system and on reforming the irrigation associations, as well as Control Yuan and National Communications Commission member nominees.Just as former Yunlin County commissioner Lee Chin-yung’s (李進勇) resignation from the DPP when appointed by the Executive Yuan to head the Central Election Commission was unconvincing, former Presidential Office secretary-general Chen Chu’s (陳菊) pledge to leave the DPP to serve as Control Yuan president does not convince people, Lin wrote in a statement.
He accused Chen of “putting on a show,” as her party membership can be reinstated after she steps down as Control Yuan president.
Chen, who was Kaohsiung mayor from 2006 to 2018, achieved “embarrassingly little” for the municipality and condoned a culture of corruption among Kaohsiung City Government officials, Lin wrote.
Of the 27 people nominated by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to serve as Control Yuan members, 24 have close ties with the DPP, which runs counter to the idea of exercising their authority in a nonpartisan manner, he wrote.
Following yesterday’s cross-caucus talks, Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) and DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) voiced support on Facebook for abolishing the two agencies, and if the DPP is serious about moving forward, Tsai should rescind her nominations, Lin wrote.
He questioned whether the DPP intends to hire more “hit men” like Control Yuan member Chen Shih-meng (陳師孟), who sparked an uproar in the judiciary in 2018 when he said he would target judges who only try people from the pan-green camp and do nothing about people from the pan-blue camp.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching