Showdown today expected over key proposed statute

The pan-green and pan-blue camps will today face off over the proposed statute for increasing investment in public construction in today's legislative sitting after legislators yesterday failed to list the statute for discussion during an extraordinary hearing of the Procedure Committee.

The extra hearing was called yesterday after Tuesday's regular session was aborted without any bills being arranged for discussion in today's legislative sitting.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is keen to see the statute finalized and a budget for the so-called ten key infrastructure projects delivered to appropriate committees for review. The statute is the legal basis for the projects and allows the package's budget to circumvent a debt ceiling stipulated in the Public Debt Law (公債法).

During yesterday's session the People First Party (PFP) caucus again moved to withhold the plan from review in the committees. Before arrangements could be made on which bills should be debated in today's legislative sitting, the time allotted for the hearing expired and it ended without agreeing on an agenda.

But as the statute has already served a four-month term of negotiation, the DPP is permitted to request a vote on it today.

"Since the Procedure Committee did not manage to arrange for any bills to be debated in today's sitting, we will have to decide on the program during the sitting tomorrow," DPP caucus secretary-general Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) said. Lee was also the chairman for this week's Procedure Committee sessions.

"The Procedure Committee is in charge of deciding which bills should go to which committees to be reviewed, yet the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the PFP have been boycotting the bills using their committee majority. It is clear that the KMT and the PFP are attempting to paralyze the legislature," said DPP Legislator Chiu Chuang-chin (邱創進), who also sat on the committee.