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Presidential election 2008: 7 days to go: CCW protests legislators' conduct

Members of the Citizen Congress Watch gather outside the legislature in Taipei yesterday to protest against legislators wasting tax dollars by going into recess for the presidential election early in the current session. PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES

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 (何宗勳) said during a protest in front of the legislature yesterday.

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.

"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 [馬英九] said just this morning that legislative reform is important. But he never agreed to meet with us or sign our legislative reform promise," Ho said.

Ku Chung-hua (顧忠華), chairman of the group, agreed.

"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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