No support seen for DPP's move on Assembly law

The Legislative Yuan is bracing itself for a showdown vote today on the law governing the operation of the National Assembly as cross-party talks called to tackle the issue yesterday failed to get off the ground.

After the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was the only party to show up for the talks, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) declared that the multiparty negotiation meeting called yesterday morning to discuss the party's planned proposal had fallen flat.

"Since these are the last cross-party talks held to discuss the matter, I will handle the DPP caucus' motion [today] in accordance with the law if it files a request to reconsider the legislation," he said.

Despite joining other parties to pass the Law on the National Assembly's Exercise of Power (國大職權行使法) on Friday, the DPP is now seeking to change two parts of the law, in part out of concern that some assembly members could jeopardize the passage of the constitutional amendments by refusing to toe their party's line.

The National Assembly is to meet in the coming weeks to approve a raft of constitutional amendments passed by the legislature last August, which include halving the legislature, abolishing the assembly and putting the right to referendum in the Constitution.

The DPP hopes to lower the bar for the assembly's approval of constitutional amendments from the law's 75 percent to a 50 percent simple majority -- its original position before the May 14 National Assembly elections -- and also hopes to exclude invalid ballots from the total number of votes. The statute currently stipulates that ballots cast by assembly members failing to toe their party's line should be considered invalid, but be counted into the total number of votes anyway.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) yesterday threatened to join forces to strike down the DPP's motion to reconsider part of the law, during today's plenary legislative session. The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and Non-partisan Solidarity Union (NPSU) also voiced their opposition to the DPP plan.

According to the legislature's rules, lawmakers managing to collect more than 40 signatures can request that the legislature review part or all of a bill that has already been passed. The request must be made during the first plenary legislative session following the passage of the bill, which in this bill's case takes place today.

The legislative speaker is obliged to deal with the request by the end of the day the request is made. The speaker could put the DPP's motion to a full vote, or could put off the motion for discussion at a later time.

Before the bill under re-examination is dealt with by the legislature, it cannot be promulgated by the president. Also, the vote on a measure to reconsider a bill is the last chance to attempt to change a law before it is promulgated.

The director of the DPP's Policy Committee, Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), who represented the DPP caucus in cross-party talks that reached an accord last Wednesday, dismissed speculation that the party's decision to file for a reconsideration request is a direct order from President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

"The reason [for the request] is that the law is flawed," he said, while admitting that the DPP has been pressured by some private groups.

The passage of the legislation reportedly angered former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), who has been pushing the DPP to stand firm on its former stance of a simple majority ratification threshold for constitutional amendments.