The Legislative Yuan would be taking a second major step toward making the legislative process more transparent if it launched online live broadcasts of all legislative meetings in September, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Nancy Chao (趙麗雲) said yesterday.
Chao, who just returned from a trip to Washington to learn about the US congressional broadcast system, told reporters that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) had agreed to hold cross-party negotiations at the end of next month to seek support for online live legislative broadcasts.
“[Wang] was optimistic about winning support across party lines to make live broadcasts of legislative sessions available to the public on the Internet when the fall legislative session begins in September,” she said.
The legislature’s online video-on-demand system is only accessible from the network within the Legislative Yuan.
The limited access has drawn criticism from legislative watchdog groups campaigning for greater transparency.
Chao, who joined KMT Legislator Daniel Hwang (黃義交) and Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) on the trip, said they also planned to establish a C-SPAN-style TV channel that would broadcast legislative meetings live starting in January.
“The initial plan is to broadcast the meetings without any editing or commentators’ remarks ... to make them as authentic as possible,” she said.
The plan would follow on the heels of an amendment passed in April to the Law Governing the Legislature’s Power (立法院職權行使法) that sought to increase transparency by requiring that all closed-door negotiations be videotaped.
Chao said promoting transparency would be helpful in improving the image of the legislature as people would have a better understanding of lawmakers and the legislature as a whole.
The delegation visited the US House of Representatives, the Senate and C-SPAN’s offices during their stay in Washington from July 21 to Monday.
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