POLITICAL PANDERING:Making Armed Forces Day a public holiday might be seen as trying to garner support before next year’s election, the DPP caucus whip said

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 08, 2015
By: Tseng Wei-chen and Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer.

A draft act to designate Armed Forces Day — commemorated on Sept. 3 — as a public holiday has been described by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) as an attempt to match a similar Chinese policy, with the caucus vowing to block the draft.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) submitted the draft, saying that he proposed renaming Armed Forces Day to “Memorial Day for the war dead and Armed Forces” and making it a public holiday — with work and classes canceled — to commemorate soldiers who died in battle.

The Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee last week passed a preliminary review of the draft, but dropped the name change, which KMT Legislator Chan Kai-chen (詹凱臣) described as “lengthy.”      [FULL  STORY]