Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) urged legislators to return their salaries to the state coffers yesterday, accusing them of taking too much time off as they prepared to take a week off ahead of next Saturday's presidential election.
"The newly elected lawmakers started their term 41 days ago, but so far they've only been at work for around 10 days," the group's executive director Ho Tsung-hsun (
What angered the CCW members more was that the lawmakers are taking the next week off to campaign for the presidential election, meaning there will be no more legislative meetings until March 25.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
"What does the presidential election have to do with what a lawmaker is supposed to do?" he said.
"A lawmaker is paid NT$180,000 [US$6,000] each month, NT$6,000 per day on average," Ho said. "By the time the presidential election is over, we taxpayers will have paid them about NT$14 million [US$455,000] for nothing!"
The protesters also expressed their disappointment at the level of sincerity legislators and party leaders have shown on making reform within the legislature.
"[Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate] Ma Ying-jeou [
Ku Chung-hua (
"There are more than 30 KMT lawmakers who have not signed the promise -- including the four who were involved in the fracas at [Democratic Progressive Party presidential candidate] Frank Hsieh's [謝長廷] campaign office two days ago," Ku said, adding that such disruptive behavior will continue without proper legislative reform.
"We, the voters, should not allow the representatives that we elected to step out of line," he said.
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