A meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee on Thursday last week turned into a brawl as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) controlled committee approved an amendment to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法), despite objections from other parties.
DPP committee co-convener Wu Yu-chin (吳玉琴) said she rejected a motion from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), because it did not address the proceedings, but simply raised a procedural question.
KMT legislators later filed a charge of dereliction of duty at the Control Yuan against Legislative Yuan Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉), while the People First Party and the New Power Party said that the meeting was illegitimate.
During a 1993 legislative meeting to review the organic acts of the National Security Council, the National Security Bureau and the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration, then-legislative speaker Liu Sung-pan (劉松藩) said that the acts had passed the three readings when the meeting turned into a chaotic brawl. Liu made the announcement without officially confirming the minutes and immediately sent the bills to the Presidential Office for promulgation, sparking debate over their legitimacy.
To settle the dispute, the Council of Grand Justices issued Constitutional Interpretation No. 342, which states that disputes regarding legislative procedure should be resolved autonomously by the Legislative Yuan, and although the minutes had not been officially confirmed before the passage of the bills, the procedural flaw does not affect the validity of the acts.
The Legislative Yuan operates by conducting open discussions. Its rules of procedures are based on the principle of legislative autonomy and should offer concrete guidelines that supplement the Constitution to ensure order, stability and the legality of the decisionmaking.
Furthermore, they should ensure fair division of responsibility among legislators while minimizing conflict. For these reasons, the rules of procedures of the Legislative Yuan are highly important.
While the rules of procedures generally allow quite a lot of flexibility in their application, the legislative speaker has the power to make a decision when controversies arise as to their interpretation, making it easier to maintain order in the legislature.
In Germany, parliamentary procedures are defined in the Bundestag’s rules of procedures, which state that should doubts arise as to its interpretation, there are two ways of resolving the issue: either the president of the Bundestag makes a decision on the case in question, or it is submitted to the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure for a decision.
In Japan, the rules of procedures for the House of Representatives also make it clear that the speaker has the authority to interpret the rules to settle controversies.
In Taiwan, it is relatively unclear how much authority the legislative speaker has to interpret the rules of procedures. Nonetheless, as stipulated by the Law Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Power (立法院職權行使法), when there is a controversy or lack of consensus, the legislative speaker can convene a cross-caucus negotiation.
Considering that, as per the law, Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) has the power to make a decision on how to interpret the rules of procedures either independently or after consulting with representatives of each legislative caucus,
Su should take advantage of that power to settle the recent dispute.
Lo Chuan-hsien is an adjunct professor of law at Central Police University and a former director-general of the legislature’s Legislative Bureau.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
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