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Legislative committee bans watchdog

By Loa Iok-sin and Flora Wang
STAFF REPORTERS
Tuesday, Apr 29, 2008, Page 3

The legislature’s Transportation Committee passed a resolution yesterday making Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) unwelcome in the legislature, effectively barring the group from attending any of the committee’s future meetings.

The resolution was proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Ken-te (陳根德).

Chen said the group held a press conference last week accusing lawmakers serving on the transportation committee of being late for a March 31 meeting that cited factually incorrect information.

According to their information, the meeting on March 31 was delayed for 114 minutes and the transportation committee was ranked last of all the other committees with an average delay of 28 minutes in starting meetings.

Last week, Chen rebutted the group’s accusations, saying that the meeting on March 31 started late because two parties needed to hold closed-door negotiation before the official meeting started. He also said the group did not know how the legislature operated and hoped that the group would correct its information.

Chen’s proposal was endorsed by four other KMT lawmakers and the resolution was passed unopposed at the committee yesterday.

Earlier yesterday, the KMT caucus accused the CCW of violating neutrality in its evaluation of legislators.

At a press conference, KMT caucus acting secretary-general Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) criticized an online poll done by the CCW comparing legislators to animals. The animals in the survey include peacocks, which represent those who often stage “shows” during legislative meetings; monkeys, which stand for those who act like vaudevillians; elephants, which meant those who constantly lie; turtles, which represent legislators who process bills very slowly; and wild dogs, which stand for those who only tend to point fingers at each other.

Other animals in the poll included pandas, which stand for those who are compassionate, and ants, which represent those who are hard-working.

The poll will end next Monday.

So far, 92 people had voted. The animals that topped the list were mice — which refer to corrupt legislators — peacocks and monkeys.

“We are willing to be supervised by the media and the public, but we refuse to be supervised by the CCW, which carries out legislative oversight with hidden motives. It is unprofessional and biased,” Hsieh said.

CCW expressed its regrets through a press release over the KMT press conference and resolution yesterday.

“We regret the press conference held by the KMT acting legislative caucus whip Hsieh Kuo-liang, which falsely accused the CCW and the resolution adopted by the Transportation Committee that put us on the ‘unwelcome’ list,” the statement said. “We will, however, not change our determination to monitor the legislature until it fully lives up to the expectations of the people.”

The group admitted that there may have been defects in their previous public statements on lawmakers, but said: “We always corrected mistakes as soon as we received telephone calls from legislative office aides and confirmed our mistakes.”

The group also said that, though Chen argued that the March 31 Transportation Committee meeting was not delayed, rather, the first part of the meeting wasn’t shown in records because it was classified.

“We have not seen any special remarks noting part of the meeting was classified on the Legislative Yuan’s Web site,” it said.

The CCW urged lawmakers not to use “defect information” as an excuse, but put effort into making the legislature more transparent.

Additional reporting by staff writer
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