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Ma and Wang discuss legislature's agenda

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) failed to reach a consensus yesterday on the long-stalled arms procurement budget and the Control Yuan nominations.

In an attempt to speed up the passage of the arms budget bill and the review of Control Yuan nominees proposed by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), Wang met with Ma at KMT headquarters for an hour, but the KMT chairman refused to budge on both issues.

While Ma agreed the legislature should deal with the arms budget during the next legislative session, which starts in September, he blamed the bill's delay on the Executive Yuan.

"The Executive Yuan sent the bill to the Legislative Yuan too late for the legislature to place the draft bill on the agenda for the extraordinary session. So the delay is not KMT or Speaker Wang's fault," the KMT chief said after his closed-door meeting with Wang.

The Executive Yuan approved the draft bill on June 14. The extraordinary legislative session ran from June 13 to last Friday.

Wang said the arms budget would pass the legislature, hopefully in the next session.

He also suggested that Ma should not propose raising the approval threshold for Control Yuan, Judicial Yuan and Examination Yuan nominations from a majority vote to a two-thirds vote. This would allow the Control Yuan to function again, he said.

"If the party caucus doesn't insist on raising the threshold, then we can deal with the nomination of Control Yuan members pretty soon," Wang said.

Ma, however, insisted that raising the approval threshold would help establish a good system in the legislature and shut out "politicians who are not supposed to get in." "The best way to select the outstanding members is to raise the threshold, so that the Control Yuan will become a non-political institution," Ma said.

The KMT chairman also said that after discussions with People First Party, his party has no immediate plan to demand the Cabinet's resignation.
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