Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday said that no extra legislative session would be called, a resolution reached by cross-party negotiation.
The plenary session ended on June 16 without passing any constitutional amendment bills, which means that a referendum over proposed changes to the Constitution alongside next year’s presidential and legislative elections — a bid to give the referendum a high voter turnout, with 50 percent required by law — is no longer possible.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus said on Thursday last week that it would propose calling an extra session to be held next month to deal with constitutional amendment bills, among others.
KMT caucus whip Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said at the time that although the constitutional amendments would not be put to a vote in January next year, the two major political parties could still motivate supporters to make sure the required turnout be reached in a separate referendum, if the amendments were passed in the extra session.
However, Wang said the cross-caucus negotiation resolved that no extra session would be called and the bills were not broached during the negotiations yesterday.
“If it is required, they will be discussed in the next legislative session [scheduled to begin in September],” Wang said.
During a question-and-answer session between lawmakers and Executive Yuan officials, it was also agreed a that in the next plenary session, the legislature would first deal with the Organizational Act of the Executive Yuan (行政院組織法) — a draft of a provisional act for building a voluntary military service — and the Employment Service Act (就業服務法), Wang said.
Wang added that the said three cases are not particularly controversial, so there was no need to call an extra session.
“If there are disagreements [over the bills], extra time might be needed to reconcile the differences; without any dispute, it simply means that the third readings will be done a few months later,” he said.
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