President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) acting in his capacity as chairman of the DPP yesterday invited lawmakers from his party to assist in his policy-making process, saying that the DPP legislative caucus can serve as a "peace-making" force at the Legislative Yuan to help the government accomplish more in the final year of his first term.
"The public always compares the Legislative Yuan to a dark political jungle but I believe that this jungle should not only have fierce beasts," Chen said during the DPP's legislative caucus inauguration ceremony.
"The DPP government has had to face challenges from the opposition alliance with vigor because the party's legislative caucus is not in the majority, I see that some agreements and cooperative ventures between the two sides during the last few meeting of this legislative session saw progress," Chen said.
"Therefore, I hope that the DPP caucus can endeavor to act as a peace-keeping force and contribute to building a stability that will facilitate interaction with the opposition in the comming session," he added.
The president also reaffirmed that he will invite more legislative from his leaders to help his policy-making processes and urged the cabinet to value mores suggestion form the legislative branch.
"I expect that the executive branch and legislative branch can together work out a effective mechanism for communicating and evaluation before the government introducing its policy.
The DPP has just held a two-day's administrative reform seminar on Saturday and Sunday to coordinate all party's elites and cabinet's top officials for creating consensus to lead the government.
Almost all party leaders from the legislative branch asked for more opportunities to participate the policy-making mechanism. The president has positively responded to them during the seminar's closing ceremony speech.
To show his respect to the party's legislative branch, President Chen personally attended the ceremony at the Legislative Yuan, which is the first time in the country that the head of state visits the parliament for participating party affairs.
Chen said that he went there as the DPP's chairman and it was also a special opportunity for him to return the place where just like a home base during his political career.
He promised that all suggestion from party's legislative caucus will be valued by the Executive Yuan, the country's cabinet and all concrete ideas among those will be closely monitored by him to ensure that the government will carry out them.
"The DPP is never a `one-person' party and has its own excellent tradition of jointly making policy," Chen said when attending the hand over ceremony of DPP legislative caucus leaders yesterday.
"I will expand my policy-making mechanism to allow more party lawmakers participating it," the president said, "and more important, the ruling party's legislative caucus should act a role as the peace-keeping' force to build a stable structure for interaction between not only the DPP and opposition alliance but also the legislative system and the administrations."
The DPP's legislative caucus with 88 members reelected its new heads, which include the chief convener, chief executive, and secretary general, on Monday and the inauguration ceremony was held yesterday.
The Justice Alliance heavyweight Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), son of deputy secretary general to the president Chen Che-nan (陳哲男), Chiu Chuei-chen
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