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Analysis: Legislative session a string of broken promises

Following the pushing, shoving and shoe-throwing on the legislative floor last Friday, a woman representing a number of civil groups that have vowed to monitor the performance of legislators yesterday presents a shoe while performing a skit outside the legislature satirizing the legislative disorder. PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES

Starting with the pledges made by all political parties to establish a clean political climate via legislation, the just-concluded legislative session ended last Friday with none of its aims achieved.

Not only did lawmakers fail to keep their word on passing the so-called "sunshine bills," they also failed to complete a review of this year's budget, even though the statutory four-month session was extended another three weeks from its original end date of Dec. 31.

The fruitless session also marked the first time in the nation's history that the central government budget had failed to pass the legislature before the beginning of the fiscal year.

In terms of quantity, the 39 bills passed in the session hit a new low.

Allen Houng (洪裕宏), an executive of the Taipei Society, an organization composed of liberal academics that has vowed to improve the legislature's performance by monitoring it closely, said the results were "partly because the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] focused solely on its own partisan interests."

With the help of the People First Party (PFP), the KMT, the biggest party in the 219-member legislature with 90 seats, dominated the Procedure Committee, where the weekly legislative agenda is discussed and set, he said.

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) once joked that he went to the committee every Tuesday lunchtime just to "eat a lunchbox," as "we [pan-green lawmakers] lost every vote for putting our bills onto the agenda."

Among the cases in question was the president's request to review his Control Yuan nominations, the delay of which has left the government watchdog agency idle for two years.

Those bills high on the agenda were bills that the KMT believes will pave the way for its victory in the 2008 presidential election, said Houng.

"Not to mention the fact that the first item on the last day's [last Friday] agenda was an amendment to the Central Election Commission aimed at protecting its party assets," he said. "The second and third items benefiting veterans and civil servants respectively were given precedence because they take care of KMT supporters."

Given that the bills were to be reviewed in accordance with the legislative agenda set by the Procedure Committee, about 40 bills on which lawmakers had reached consensus eventually failed to pass because those three controversial bills were placed at the top of the list.

The bills included the central government's 2007 budget bill, a bill calling for stricter regulations on tobacco, a bill designed to establish an institution to manage labor pension funds and a bill aimed at establishing intellectual property courts.

While the KMT should take partial responsibility for the legislature's poor performance during this session, Houng said that the DPP also deserves its share of the blame.

"DPP lawmakers didn't work hard enough. The dominance of the pan-blue camp in the legislature shouldn't be used as an excuse for `legislative inaction,'" Houng said.

When the legislative session began on Sept. 19, a host of bills related to dealing with corruption involving politicians were given priority by both the pan-blue and the pan-green camps in the wake of graft scandals implicating politicians.

However, none of these so-called "sunshine bills" passed.

"I'm not satisfied," said John Wei (魏千峰), a lawyer with the anti-President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) campaign.

Wei said the anti-Chen campaign headquarters would establish an anti-corruption association made up of social groups and lawyers to continue lobbying for the passage of the "sunshine bills" in the next legislative session.

Opposition lawmakers launched two recall motions against Chen on Oct 13 and Nov. 20, in addition to the first recall on June 27 during the last legislative session's extraordinary session.

Multiparty negotiations on the "sunshine bills" during that period, however, were held just once.

"The passage of the sunshine bills will surely impose strict discipline on lawmakers, which might explain why they have been slow in enacting this legislation," said Wei. "As an activist group, we need to make the bills an issue and bring pressure to bear on them."
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