Democratic Progressive Party

DPP Pushes for Increase in Defense Spending Using Extra Tax Revenue, as KMT Calls for Cash Handouts

Taiwan reported record-high tax revenue for 2024, with 3.73 trillion NT in taxes collected. This is a larger windfall than expected, in that there were 497.2 billion NT more in taxes than budgeted for by the government. The extra revenue is due to strong exports, as well as stock gains because of market enthusiasm about artificial intelligence...

KMT’s Infrastructure Bill Last Year Shows the False Nature of Its Claims to Care About Fiscal Balance

With recent wide-ranging budget cuts passed by the KMT, the KMT has sought to defend the cuts as necessary for fiscal security in Taiwan. To this extent, the KMT has claimed that the cuts only amount to 3% of the budget and that such budget-cutting also occurred during the Tsai administration. By contrast, President Lai Ching-te of the DPP has framed the cuts and freezes as amounting to 30% of the available funding. There have never been cuts on this scale in the past twenty years, showing that against the claims of the KMT, such budget-cutting is not normal in the legislature...

Lai Administration Carries Out Its First Execution, In Effort to Prove Capital Punishment Still on the Books

The first execution under the Lai administration took place yesterday. This was the first execution carried out by the Taiwanese government in five years. For the execution to have been carried out, the Minister of Justice and President would have to sign off. The last execution in Taiwan took place under the Tsai administration in April 2020...

Why Has the KMT Begun to Attack the Kuma Academy Over Funding?

The KMT has hit out at funding for the Kuma Academy, the best-known of Taiwan’s civil defense initiatives. In particular, the KMT has accused fundraising efforts for the Kuma Academy–which took place on a public welfare fundraising platform run by the Ministry of Health and Welfare–as being an effort to fund political activities. Laws forbid political activities from fundraising on public welfare platforms...