Lawmakers yesterday gave up on their much-ballyhooed efforts to reach a consensus over holding a special legislative session, leaving dozens of bills -- including the government's budget for this year -- in limbo.
Bowing to the inevitable, legislators from across the political spectrum agreed to drop plans to try to hold an extraordinary session of the Legislative Yuan today and tomorrow.
Politicians from the ruling and opposition parties previously said they attached great importance to holding the session. But neither side was willing to compromise on whether to review a controversial amendment that would alter the nature of the nation's election oversight body, the Central Election Commission (CEC).
As a result of the impasse, the central government's annual budget for this year which was supposed to be approved before the end of last year will not be reviewed until March 2, at the earliest.
Long wait
The next legislative term begins on Thursday, and lawmakers yesterday announced that the legislature would begin meeting on Feb. 27. They agreed to review bills on March 2 and March 5.
Caucus whips from all major parties put their signatures on a proposal endorsing the decision to give up on the extra session, but lawmakers still spent the better part of the day pointing fingers at each other.
Most of the accusations were aimed at assigning blame for having brought up the proposal to not hold an extra session during closed-door cross-party negotiations.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers told a press conference that Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) was the one who suggested canceling the session.
"When we arrived at the negotiations, a proposal to call off the extra session was already on the table. They [the non-KMT caucus whips] had already said `yes' to that, so we had no choice but to agree," KMT Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (
Ker contested that version of events, saying the proposal was Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng's (
Wang, meanwhile, said it was "meaningless" to assign blame to the person who made the suggestion, as "all legislative caucuses gave their approval for it in the end."
Still, some lawmakers were dissatisfied with the process.
Subsidies
According to DPP Legislator Wei Ming-ku (
The proposals to hold a two-day extra session came in the wake of chaos during the final meeting of the legislature's previous session on Jan. 19, which left the budget and several other bills stalled.
The DPP proposed reviewing 12 bills, including the budget, nine anti-corruption bills, an arms procurement bill and a bill concerning employees' benefits. Meanwhile, the KMT wanted to review 35 different bills during the extra session, including an amendment to the Organic Law of the Central Election Commission (中央選舉委員會組織法).
A boycott launched by the DPP as part of an effort to stop a vote on the KMT-introduced CEC amendment on Jan. 19 led rendered the session useless.
The CEC amendment would effectively give opposition parties control of the election body -- part of the Executive Yuan -- by requiring that CEC officials were appointed in proportion to political parties' legislative seats.
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