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Presidential election 2008: 21 days to go: Hsieh signs pledge to make legislature more transparent

Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) yesterday signed a pledge to make legislative proceedings more transparent and open to the public.

Hsieh made the commitment in response to a request from Citizen's Congress Watch, a non-governmental organization that monitors the legislature.

Representatives of the alliance visited Hsieh yesterday.

Citizen's Congress Watch chairman Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) told reporters that they also planned to schedule a meeting with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to urge him to also sign their appeal.

"All of the DPP lawmakers responded positively to our appeal in a questionnaire, but until now only 56 percent of KMT lawmakers have responded. Even Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) has not yet given his endorsement," Ku said.

As the legislature has already installed a Video-on-Demand system, which allows proceedings in all the chambers to be broadcast live online within the legislature, it would be easy to make it accessible to the public, Ku said.

Hsieh expressed his appreciation to the alliance members, saying that the establishment of a system to monitor the legislature would be helpful to end and rectify abuses of legislative power.

According to the commitment, the signatories resolve to push the legislature to make public all meetings held in the legislature, including closed-door cross-party negotiations for which neither written nor visual records are kept.

Signatories will also promote citizens' supervision rights by coordinating with the legislature on allowing civil groups to attend conferences held by legislative commissions as well as the legislature's question-and-answer sessions, which are currently only accessible to the media.
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