Several groups of Taiwanese lawmakers will depart the country on Sunday for the United States, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary, to conduct “parliamentary diplomacy” during the Legislative Yuan recess.
The legislative delegation that is heading for the U.S. is being led by Johnny Chiang (???), former chair of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and the convener of the Legislature’s Diplomacy and National Defense Committee, and is scheduled to visit Washington, D.C., Phoenix, Arizona, and Los Angeles.
According to a press release issued by Chiang, the delegation is set to meet with American lawmakers who have previously visited Taiwan, including Representative Mario Diaz Balart, co-chair of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus.
The delegation will also meet with Taiwan’s top envoy to Washington Hsiao Bi-khim (???) and a number of senior U.S. officials, and will visit Taiwanese businesspersons and attend overseas compatriot activities to jointly enhance Taipei-Washington relations, said Chiang in the press release.
Other members of the delegation include four KMT lawmakers, Wu Sz-huai (???), Yeh Yu-lan (???), Lee De-wei (???), Hung Mong-kai (???), and independent lawmaker Freddy Lim (???).
The other delegations, which are scheduled to depart on Sunday night, consist of lawmakers who are members of the Taiwan-Poland Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association, Taiwan-Slovakia Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association, and Taiwan-Hungary Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association, respectively.
Taiwanese lawmakers are scheduled to meet their counterparts in the three countries and also visit NGOs in Poland and refugee centers there that have sheltered Ukrainian refugees from the Russian invasion.
Meanwhile, independent lawmaker Freddy Lim and Hung Sun-han (???) of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are concluding a trip to the U.S. to attend the eighth World Parliamentarians’ Conventions on Tibet (WPCT) held in Washington, D.C.
According to a Hung’s Facebook post, he and Lim also visited the U.S. Department of State and several local NGOs.
They also met with Nury A. Turkel, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and Damon Wilson, president and CEO of the National Endowment for Democracy, he said in the post.
Lawmakers in Taiwan often travel overseas in the summer during the Legislative Yuan recession before the lawmaker body reopens in September.
Over the past two years, however, due to travel restrictions imposed for the COVID-19 pandemic, they rarely traveled overseas during the legislative recess.
Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel