The ruling and opposition caucuses in the Legislative Yuan yesterday reached a preliminary agreement on a plan for reducing the number of seats in the legislature from 225 to 113 by 2008, but failed to reach agreement on how the seats will be apportioned and on reserving seats for women.
The caucuses also agreed on a plan to reserve 34 seats for legislators-at-large.
Seats for overseas legislators would be eliminated.
Following a great deal of controversy, the caucuses abandoned a Korea-style impeachment article that the pan-blue camp had introduced two days ago.
The Democratic Progressive Party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party were all highly supportive of single-member districts and two votes per voter, but the alliance of independent lawmakers was in favor of the current multi-member districts.
The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) favored multi-member districts, but with a two-vote system.
The caucuses agreed that reserving 30 percent of the seats in the legislature for women was too high a standard, with the TSU and the alliance of independent lawmakers calling for 25 percent female representation.
Another proposal stipulated that women would be guaranteed 50 percent of the legislator-at-large seats but would receive no guarantees regarding any of the regional seats.
Another round of negotiations on the future shape of the legislature is slated for next Tuesday.
Before the presidential election, the caucuses reached an agreement on legislative reform, but the alliance of independent lawmakers introduced a motion for further negotiations, and the bill had been stalled since.
The earlier agreement included reducing the number of seats from 225 to 113 and lengthening legislative terms from three years to four.
The previous agreement called for cities and counties to elect a total of 73 legislators, with at least one legislator from each city and county.
It aimed to establish single-member districts.
Aboriginals in the plains area would have elected three legislators, as would Aboriginals in mountainous areas.
There would have been 34 legislators-at-large, including overseas seats.
To encourage women's participation in politics, the agreement called for representation in the legislature of at least 30 percent of both sexes, meaning that women would occupy at least 34 seats.
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