With the legislature’s seventh term ending in January next year, Citizen Congress Watch (CCW), a legislative watchdog, said legislators appeared to be focused more on getting re-elected than doing their job and attending meetings.
CCW director Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) said several legislators were exploiting a loophole in the system that requires them to only sign in once per week to register for a full week’s of participation at legislative meetings.
Ku said the tendency of legislators to cut corners was reproachable and that his organization was keen to learn how the attendance rule came to be that way.
The eight standing committees that comprise the legislature meet every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, with each cycle of three days constituting one sitting. However, since March 7, there have been many instances in which legislators registered one cycle by attending only one day of meetings.
This practice was observed in six of the eight committees, Ku said
The standing committees are charged with reviewing and evaluating all laws pertaining to their respective fields.
For example, the National Defense Standing Committee is in charge of all laws pertaining to diplomatcy, foreign affairs, war declaration, treaties, declarations of martial law and any other matters concerning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of National Defense and the Overseas Compatriot Affairs Commission.
A legislator speaking on condition of anonymity said the political parties were busy with their upcoming party primaries for next year’s presidential election and that most legislators had a tacit understanding whereby attending once or twice was sufficient to count as attending a full cycle.
Employees at the legislature said that if the subject matter of a meeting was complicated and time-consuming, conducting a thorough review of the matter at hand was impossible with only two meetings per cycle.
“The strange thing is cramming different subjects that should take up two or three meetings into one,” the employees said, adding that everyone was aware of why legislators were doing so.
“This practice is unreasonable and unfair to the legislators who attend all the meetings,” Ku said, adding that the legislature should raise its standards of political oversight so the CCW could do a more concrete job.
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