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Transparency in legislature vital: citizen's group

Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ying of the Puyuma tribe, dressed in a traditional wedding costume, attends the first meeting of the seventh legislature in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: KUO JIH-HSIAO, TAIPEI TIMES

With the new legislature convening for the first time yesterday, the Citizen's Congress Watch (CCW) yesterday urged lawmakers to allow more transparency and ban cross-party negotiations from taking place behind closed doors.

"The legislature spent NT$40 million [US$1.2 million] to install a video-on-demand [VOD] system that allows live online monitoring of legislative meetings," CCW president Ku Chung-hua (顧忠華) told a news conference.

"The money came from taxpayers' pockets -- so why doesn't the public have access to the system?" he asked.

CCW executive director Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) said that during a visit to Hong Kong's Legislative Council last month, the group found that the territory's residents were able to view recordings of the council's meetings either online or on TV.

"If this can happen in a place where lawmakers aren't elected by universal suffrage, why can't the same thing take place here?" Ho asked.

He said Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) had told him that "the VOD cannot be made public because some lawmakers are opposed to it."

"If you want privacy, please resign as legislator," Ku said.

Meanwhile, Hsieh Tung-ju (謝東儒), secretary-general of the Alliance for Handicapped People, said that closed-door cross-party negotiations should be banned.

Legislative regulations allow lawmakers to hold negotiations off the record and announce only the results.

"It's a lawmaker's job to represent the people, and when they do so, they should let the public see it," Hsieh said.

He added that simultaneous sign language should be provided along with the broadcasts.

The group also presented a list of lawmakers, who had signed an agreement to push for more transparency in the legislature.

Twenty-seven of the 81 legislators affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and 17 of the Democratic Progressive Party's 27 legislators -- or a total of 47 percent of the legislature -- had signed the document, the group said.

Besides demanding more transparency, Ho said the citizen's group would collect records of legislative meetings and invite academics and experts in different fields to review and analyze these meetings "so that voters will know who did what and if they were consistent."
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