Eliminating cross-party negotiations behind closed doors, increasing the transparency of legislative meetings and changing the dual committee convener system were the main concerns of political observers at a public hearing on legislative reform yesterday at the legislature.
“Cross-party negotiations were originally meant to speed up the legislative process, but it’s doing just the opposite,” said Yang Jih-ching (楊日青), a political science professor at National Chengchi University.
During a cross-party negotiation session, if any party’s legislative caucus or one of the negotiation representatives disagrees with the result, even a formal decision by permanent committee members can be overthrown.
Regulations stipulate that only the final result — not any part of the process — has to be revealed to the public, while the caucus or the individual lawmaker who overthrows the agreement is not required to elaborate.
“It’s against the principle of transparent and responsible politics under the supervision of all citizens,” Yang said.
Aside from the closed-door meetings, transparency of permanent committee meetings also came under heavy fire.
Only reporters are allowed into committee meetings and while all meetings are recorded and broadcast live online, it can only be viewed at the Legislative Yuan and a lawmaker may only get the copy of his or her own recording afterwards.
“Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng [王金平] said he agreed with making live broadcasts public, but a few lawmakers are against it,” said Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳), executive director of Citizen Congress Watch. “We need to find out who these ‘few lawmakers’ are.”
Lin Cho-shui (林濁水), a former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator, started by criticizing the dual committee convener system.
There are eight permanent committees in the legislature, and each has two conveners who preside over meetings.
“The dual committee convener system was created by [the late dictator] Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石] to weaken legislative power,” Lin said. “Two conveners belonging to different factions may boycott each other and the public would never know who should be held responsible for legislative inefficiency,” he said.
DPP Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠), who hosted the public hearing, said that the DPP caucus would support legislative reform according to the observers’ ideas.
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