Staff Reporter
The Procedure Committee of the legislature yesterday again failed to put a number of bills onto the legislative agenda because of a boycott by opposition legislators.
Proposals concerning the arms purchase, nominees for the Control Yuan and chief prosecutor, the handling of stolen political party assets and the unfreezing of government budgets all remained on hold after yesterday's meeting.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
A motion put forth by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (
Lai's other motions to stall the proposals for unfreezing government budgets for this year and handling of stolen party assets were also backed by the pan-blue camp.
The KMT also motioned to block the budget to procure weapons systems from the US. People First Party (PFP) Legislator Lin Hui-kuan (
"No matter what KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Kuo-ching's (
Before yesterday's meeting, DPP legislators tried to appeal to the conscience of their pan-blue counterparts following Ma's recent comments on the KMT's willingness to review the arms purchase and Control Yuan nominations.
DPP caucus whip Yeh Yi-ching (
Yeh said she hoped that pan-blue legislators would not prevent the arms purchase proposal from being put to a legislative review since Ma had made a promise recently.
Distributing longan from his hometown of Chiayi to other committee members as a gesture, Lin Kuo-ching urged cross-party cooperation on facilitating review of bills concerning people's livelihoods.
Earlier yesterday, the DPP caucus held a press conference urging the KMT caucus to uphold Ma's promises and stop boycotting important bills in the Procedure Committee.
DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (
"We look forward to [cooperation] and will cooperate [with the KMT if they want to work on more bills]," Lin said at the conference.
But DPP Legislator Lu Tien-lin (
The promises Ma made were positive, but the boycott by pan-blue legislators was a "slap in Ma's face," he said.
KMT policy coordination department director Tseng Yung-chuan (
He added that if the Ministry of Defense withdraws the major NT$610.8 billion arms purchase proposal, the party would "consider" letting the NT$6.4 billion additional arms sale budget proposal go on the legislative agenda.
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