Legislature prepares to begin a bruising session

Lawmakers bracing themselves for what promises to be a contentious legislative session, due to begin tomorrow.

The caucuses of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) are calling for meetings today and tomorrow, hoping to reach a consensus over controversial bills.

In addition to the political wrangling between the ruling and opposition parties, much attention is expected to be focused on the role Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) will play in the legislature, where he has been serving as a lawmaker for 30 years, including six years as vice speaker and six years as speaker.

After his resounding defeat in the KMT chairmanship election and his resignation as KMT vice chairman, Wang has made it clear that he would back out of party operations.

His latest stance on the special arms procurement budget bill has raised political eyebrows, and set off an internal conflict within the pan-blue camp.

"The arms procurement package is not that much a battle between the pan-green and pan-blue alliances, but more a power struggle between the KMT and its long-term ally, the PFP," said Academia Sinica political analyst Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明). "The strong PFP Chairman James Soong [宋楚瑜] opposes the arms procurement plan, and he will play the more dominating role in controversial issues."

However, Soong's momentum could be dampened if more PFP members walk out of the party, because Soong's stout opposition to the arms budget is a desperate attempt to keep party members stay in the ranks, Hsu said.

Hsu that he suspects the arms budget will pass the legislature in a broken-up form, with the Patriot anti-missile batteries passing first as part of the regular defense budget and the special budget for the other two items passing later.

If the budget eventually passes the legislature, Hsu said, Wang will definitely get the credit, but more pressure will be on Ma if it doesn't.

Although KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) says that he agrees with Wang about pushing the arms procurement bill through to the legislature's National Defense Committee for review, he blames the Executive Yuan for the stalled plan, saying that the DPP government should be held politically accountable for procrastinating with the legislation.

Ma that the purchase items were first proposed in 1997 by the KMT administration, and then approved by the US government in 2001, but that the DPP government did not present the bill to the legislature until last year.

Ma also called on the DPP government to deal with the failure of the country's first nationwide referendum, held in conjunction with last year's presidential election, before it can discuss the budget for the procurement of the Patriot batteries.

Afraid Ma would back down and take a laissez-faire attitude toward the arms procurement package, PFP caucus whip Sun Ta-chien (孫大千) has threatened to support the DPP in pushing the party assets bill through to committee as a retaliatory measure.

The bill is designed to compel the KMT to return its stolen assets to the people and state coffers.

As further negotiations are still needed to iron out differences between the two parties, the KMT caucus plans to call a caucus meeting today and the PFP caucus is scheduled to meet tomorrow.

In addition to the arms procurement package, the DPP caucus has marked 17 other priority bills for the next session.

DPP whip William Lai (賴清德) said that his caucus has decided to adopt a different approach in the upcoming legislative session, in the hope of passing all 18 priority bills.

"We will take advantage of the campaign activities of the year-end local elections and appeal to the electorate directly, instead of letting the media do the job," he said. "We hope the public will give opposition parties a lot of pressure, and we hope our new strategy will help pass the bills, as well as boost our momentum for the year-end elections."

In a bid to increase the odds of passing the bills, the caucus has also reached a consensus with the Executive Yuan to make fewer bills "priorities" than it has before.

Since the pan-blue alliance has vowed to put the organic bill of the proposed national communication committee (NCC) to a vote on Sept. 25, when the four-month negotiation period matures, Lai said that he expects to see heated debates over that controversial bill as well.

The DPP caucus meeting is slated for today. Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), Vice Premier Wu Rong-i (吳榮義) and Executive Yuan Secretary-General Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) are expected to attend the event.

The KMT caucus has decided to focus on 37 priority bills for the forthcoming session, including the NCC bill, the flood-control bill and constituency rezoning bill. They also pledge to closely scrutinize next year's government budget.

KMT whip Cho Po-yuan (卓伯源) said that his caucus will focus more on bills concerning the people's livelihood in a bid to win the support of voters falling in the middle of the political spectrum.

On the cross-strait front, Cho said that his caucus will continue to push for cross-strait direct transportation links, allowing Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan and for allowing the export of Taiwanese fruit and agricultural products to China.

In addition to turning up the heat on government officials during question-and-answer sessions to help materialize the agreements made between pan-blue leaders and the Chinese authorities, Cho said that his caucus will propose legal revisions to the Act Governing Relations Between Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例).

In addition to the 37 priority bills, Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權), a KMT lawmaker who also serves as the executive director of the party's Central Policy Committee, said his caucus hopes President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) would make a new list of nominees for the Control Yuan.

They also hope to re-establish the second March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee, which was dissolved last year.

The KMT is slated to hold a forum today to consolidate party consensus over priority bill.

PFP whip Hwang Yih-jiau (黃義交) said that his caucus will continue to join effort with its KMT counterpart in the next legislative session.

In the wake of the riot by Thai workers in Kaohsiung City and the delay of the opening of service of the high-speed rail system, Hwang said that his caucus plans to push the passage of a special bill on the BOT (build-operate-transfer) construction model, to allow legislative supervision of such construction projects.