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Ma supports plan to yield seats

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou, left, holds up a pair of jogging shoes given to him by former Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee chairman Chang Feng-hsu, second right, during a campaign rally in Keelung yesterday. PHOTO: CNA

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said he was in favor of the KMT yielding at least four legislative committee convener seats to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

"It is necessary to give some committee conveners to the DPP. They would not have a channel to express their opinions in the legislature if we refused to do so and that would not be democratic," Ma said when approached for comments after attending a municipal event in Taipei.

KMT Secretary-General Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) announced on Friday night that the party would yield four committee convener seats to the DPP, the party with one-fourth of the seats in the new legislature.

Under the new "single-member district, two votes" system, which cut the number of legislative seats in half, the number of legislative committees has been reduced from 12 to eight, each with 13 to 15 members.

Committee members will be chosen based on the proportion of the seats each party received and the conveners in each committee will be elected by the committee members.

As the majority party in the legislature, Wu said the KMT should initiate efforts to build better relations between the pan-blue and pan-green camps, adding that the KMT would be willing to yield more seats if the DPP put forward better candidates.

KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) also approved the move yesterday, while denying that the KMT's legislative caucus was planning to halt the new session of the legislature three weeks before the presidential election because the party did not want its performance in the legislature to negatively influence Ma's chances in the March 22 poll.

He said the legislature also took more than 20 days off before the presidential elections in both 1996 and 2000 to allow legislators to campaign for the presidential candidates. Whether or not a break was necessary would be decided via cross-party negotiations, he said.

The new legislature will convene on Feb. 1 to elect the new legislative speaker and deputy speaker. It is scheduled to have a general question-and-answer session from Feb 26. to Feb. 29, which will be followed by a break until after the March 22 election.

When asked for comments yesterday, DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said what the KMT was doing was no "favor" but was simply in line with "the traditional practices of the legislature."

"That is the principal we practise here -- to show respect to the smaller parties in the legislature," Ker said.

He said that the DPP caucus in the past session had yielded conveners' seats to the Taiwan Solidarity Union caucus while the KMT caucus had given conveners' seats to the People First Party caucus and also to independent legislators.

Additional reporting by Jimmy Chuang
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