Lawmakers had a day off yesterday as the scheduled session was adjourned following a vote initiated by the pan-blue camp last Friday to block the passage of two bills.
Most lawmakers went on the campaign trail in their constituencies, but Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) lawmakers staged a sit-in under the porch of the legislative building from 10:30am to 5:30pm.
Setting up a banner that read "The budget bill gets stalled and the public suffers," TSU lawmakers offered an apology for "legislative inaction," referring to the five-month deadlock regarding the government budget.
"It's approaching the end of April, but the [2007 fiscal] budget remains stalled. As part of the legislature, we feel very sorry," TSU legislative caucus whip Tseng Tsahn-deng (曾燦燈) said.
The Budget Act (預算法) stipulates that the budget request must be passed by the legislature at least one month before the fiscal year and be promulgated by the president 15 days before that.
The delay relates to the heated confrontation between lawmakers over the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-proposed bill which would see the Central Election Commission (CEC) reorganized to give it a pan-blue majority.
The KMT refuses to pass the budget bill unless the pan-green camp accedes to its demands over the CEC bill, and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has so far refused to compromise.
Both the KMT and the DPP insist on holding their ground on the CEC bill as they believe that the CEC's authority to determine whether to hold a referendum on recovering the KMT's stolen assets in tandem with next year's presidential election will influence the election result.
Growth affected
"The KMT and the DPP have sacrificed the public's welfare for party interests. It's unlikely that the country will be able to secure 4 percent economic growth this year," TSU Legislator Ho Min-hao (
Ho said that the economic growth rate for the first quarter this year was down 0.64 percent compared with the same period last year because the government, without its budget, is unable to fund construction projects.
The 12 TSU lawmakers took turns attending yesterday's protest, and threatened to launch a massive public demonstration next week.
Later yesterday, the TSU proposed a motion demanding caucus whips across party lines agree the budget bill be the first item to be reviewed in the next plenary session, but only DPP legislative caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) signed off on it.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) called a cross-party meeting to arrange the agenda for next week's plenary session.
The meeting went on for less than 10 minutes and no conclusions were reached.
Wang said that he had failed to convince the pan-blue camp that the budget bill should not be tied to the CEC bill and should be reviewed as soon as possible.
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