Taiwan must reject four bills backed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to prevent democratic backsliding, Bluebird movement activists told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
The bills are a proposed amendment to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), a national security strategy draft act and two amendments to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
The Constitutional Court Procedure Act amendment would change the court’s quorum from two-thirds of presently incumbent justices to two-thirds of the full court, Economic Democracy Union convenor Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) said.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
The court currently consists of 15 grand justices, including seven who are due to retire at the end of October, leaving eight judges sitting on the bench, short of the 10-member threshold stipulated by the amendment, he said.
This means that the KMT and TPP could paralyze the court by refusing to confirm new justices, effectively giving the opposition free reign to pass any law it wishes, Lai said.
The KMT-backed national security strategy bill would empower the premier to draft national security strategy plans, which would be approved by the president and then handed to the legislature for deliberation, he said.
This draft act is an attempt by the legislature to take over the president’s constitutional authority over national security matters, Lai said, adding that bill contravenes the Constitution’s division of powers.
A proposal by opposition lawmakers to shorten the residency requirement for Chinese spouses from six years to four years uses equality as a pretext to give Chinese preferential treatment, Taiwan Citizen Front member Huang Ting-wei (黃亭偉) said.
Non-Chinese foreigners married to Taiwanese face additional hurdles toward obtaining alien residency certificates, including giving up their citizenship of origin and being required to reside in Taiwan for a fixed term without household registration, she said.
Chinese spouses — who already are exempt from these requirements despite being citizens of a hostile state — would have an even shorter path to legal residency, Huang said.
The opposition also proposed to hand the power to establish restricted maritime zones from the military to the Ocean Affairs Council and allow secret cross-strait negotiations to be conducted on the nation’s outlying islands, she said.
Taipei and New Taipei City government officials are aiming to have the first phase of the Wanhua-Jungho-Shulin Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) line completed and opened by 2027, following the arrival of the first train set yesterday. The 22km-long Light Green Line would connect four densely populated districts in Taipei and New Taipei City: Wanhua (萬華), Jhonghe (中和), Tucheng (土城) and Shulin (樹林). The first phase of the project would connect Wanhua and Jhonghe districts, with Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and Chukuang (莒光) being the terminal stations. The two municipalities jointly hosted a ceremony for the first train to be used
MILITARY AID: Taiwan has received a first batch of US long-range tactical missiles ahead of schedule, with a second shipment expected to be delivered by 2026 The US’ early delivery of long-range tactical ballistic missiles to Taiwan last month carries political and strategic significance, a military source said yesterday. According to the Ministry of National Defense’s budget report, the batch of military hardware from the US, including 11 sets of M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and 64 MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems, had been scheduled to be delivered to Taiwan between the end of this year and the beginning of next year. However, the first batch arrived last month, earlier than scheduled, with the second batch —18 sets of HIMARS, 20 MGM-140 missiles and 864 M30
Representative to the US Alexander Yui delivered a letter from the government to US president-elect Donald Trump during a meeting with a former Trump administration official, CNN reported yesterday. Yui on Thursday met with former US national security adviser Robert O’Brien over a private lunch in Salt Lake City, Utah, with US Representative Chris Stewart, the Web site of the US cable news channel reported, citing three sources familiar with the matter. “During that lunch the letter was passed along, and then shared with Trump, two of the sources said,” CNN said. O’Brien declined to comment on the lunch, as did the Taipei
A woman who allegedly attacked a high-school student with a utility knife, injuring his face, on a Taipei metro train late on Friday has been transferred to prosecutors, police said yesterday. The incident occurred near MRT Xinpu Station at about 10:17pm on a Bannan Line train headed toward Dingpu, New Taipei City police said. Before police arrived at the station to arrest the suspect, a woman surnamed Wang (王) who is in her early 40s, she had already been subdued by four male passengers, one of whom was an off-duty Taipei police officer, police said. The student, 17, who sustained a cut about
RSS