If the opposition in the Legislative Yuan continues to refuse to act on President Chen Shui-bian's (
The opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan has asked Chen to resubmit his list of nominees and the president has agreed to do so, Lai said, adding that there is no rationale for the legislature to turn down the list this time around.
The list requesting approval of the president's selections will be included in a letter to be delivered to the Legislative Yuan early today, according to the Presidential Office.
However, Lai said, the president did not add or subtract names to the previous list that will be submitted to show that he still has faith in his first selections. The president will respect the Legislative Yuan's decision even if some of the nominees are not affirmed, he said.
The Legislative Yuan is encroaching on the president's nomination power by asking him to replace the names of his nominees even before exercising their right to affirm the individuals, Lai said.
If the president were to consent to changing his selections, it would be tantamount to the Legislative Yuan usurping the president's power to nominate the chiefs of other government agencies, such as the Examination Yuan and the Judiciary Yuan, Lai said.
This situation would lead to political chaos, he said.
Lai warned the opposition, mainly the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP), that they will face a backlash from the public in the next elections if they keep boycotting the president's nominees.
Meanwhile, the DPP's political ally in the Legislative Yuan, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU), warned yesterday that if the opposition continues its boycott of the president's nominees, the TSU will appeal to the Council of Grand Justices to suspend the Control Yuan according to a constitutional interpretation.
Lo Chih-ming, the whip of the TSU caucus at the Legislative Yuan, didn't elaborate on how this could be done, saying only that his party disagrees with the KMT and PFP's position of boycotting the nomination process altogether, but that the TSU is not prepared to give all the nominees a rubber stamp of approval.
The KMT and PFP, which held a very small majority in the last Legislative Yuan -- as it does in this new one -- asked the president in the previous legislature to withdraw all his nominees, claiming that none of them lived up to public expectations for Control Yuan members.
The president refused; the result was a Control Yuan that has had no members since Feb. 1 when the terms of the previous Control Yuan members ended.
The opposition in the new legislature asked the president to submit a new list of nominees on the grounds that his original list to the previous legislature is invalid in this new legislature.
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