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Wang Jin-pyng offers solution to impasse over CEC

Democratic Progressive Party supporters protest outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday to call for the legislature to pass this year's government budget by the end of the month. PHOTO: CNA

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday presented a proposal to resolve the drawn-out controversy over the formation of the Central Election Commission (CEC), which has led to numerous brawls in the legislature.

Under current regulations, CEC members are nominated by the premier and appointed by the president. No other conditions need to be met, except that the percentage of seats held by a single party must not exceed two-fifths of the total, while at least one non-party member must be included.

An amendment introduced by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) calls for all 17 members, including five non-party members, to be chosen according to the parties' relative number of legislative seats.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has accused the KMT of trying to thwart a possible referendum on recovering the KMT's stolen assets by taking control of the CEC, but the KMT insists its amendment is aimed at removing what it calls the CEC's partisan bias.

"I suggest that five non-party members be jointly nominated by the legislative speaker and the premier," Wang said.

Wang made the suggestion when premier-designate Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) made a courtesy call to the speaker yesterday. Wang brought up the idea during their meeting.

Under Wang's proposal, the pan-blue and pan-green camps would each have six seats, while the speaker and the premier would be entitled to select the remaining five without regard to each party's number of legislative seats.

The KMT proposal would give the pan-blue camp a majority in the CEC, while Wang's proposal would give the pan-blue and pan-green camps an equal number of seats, while the remaining five seats go to non-partisan members.

In response, Chang said: "It's not suitable for me to comment on the suggestion now, because I have not yet taken the oath of office, but our [DPP] legislative caucus will think it over."

"The CEC bill forms the crux behind the three budget requests that remain stalled in the legislature, as the pan-blue camp has said that it would not approve the budget requests until the CEC bill has been passed," Wang said.

The stalled budget requests include the NT$1.6 trillion (US$48 billion) government budget, the NT$3.3 trillion budget for state-owned enterprises and governmental non-profit funds and the NT$77.3 billion special budget for public construction projects.

Yesterday's legislative plenary session, at which the CEC bill and the government budget had been scheduled for review, was adjourned for the rest of the day.

KMT Central Policy Committee executive director Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權) said at a separate event that his party would boycott Chang's report on his administrative policies if he failed to reach consensus with the pan-blue camp on the CEC bill.

Meanwhile, around 300 DPP supporters protested outside the legislature yesterday, continuing the DPP's protest against the budget bill impasse.

DPP legislators who took to the stage to address demonstrators about the importance of passing the budget bill were met with cheers from the crowd.

On the other side of the legislature, KMT legislators mobilized several hundred supporters, urging the DPP not to block its CEC amendment bill.

Like the KMT protest last Friday, yesterday's gathering was soon dispersed by the police because KMT legislators had not applied for permission to stage a rally.

The police had erected barricades to separate the two camps' supporters, but no physical confrontations were reported.

Additional reporting by Flora Wang
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