Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers have proposed amendments to prevent lawmakers from leaking confidential material concerning important state matters and national security.
The amendments proposed by DPP legislators Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) and Chung Chia-pin (鍾佳濱), as well as fellow party members, aim to address loopholes in the Organic Act of the Legislative Yuan (立法院組織法) and Legislators’ Conduct Act (立法委員行為法).
The amendments would require lawmakers, ministry officials, legislative clerks and stenographers attending closed-door legislative meetings to sign a non-disclosure agreement before being allowed entry, and would prohibit them from bringing in mobile phones and other telecommunication devices.
Photo: Taipei Times
The amendments are needed to protect sensitive government information and highly classified materials related to the military, national defense and state intelligence agencies, Chung said.
“If the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) want to expand their authority ... then they have an obligation not to divulge our nation’s secrets,” he said.
Chung was referring to the KMT’s and TPP’s attempts to amend the Rules of Procedure of the Legislative Yuan (立法院議事規則) to give lawmakers the power to hold investigative hearings.
Chung said he would like to create four legal “protective firewalls” to prevent lawmakers from leaking state secrets and colluding with enemy forces, by patching loopholes in the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Rules of Procedure of the Legislative Yuan, Legislators’ Conduct Act and the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
The proposed amendments would also require lawmakers and their aides to report to the legislature’s secretariat when traveling to China, Hong Kong and Macau, during the legislative session.
Such information would be made available to the public, and a judicial investigation would be conducted if lawmakers contravene the regulation.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its