Committee membership for legislators of smaller parties should not be determined by drawing lots, New Power Party (NPP) Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said yesterday, after many of the party’s lawmakers did not make it onto their preferred committees.
Of the party’s five legislators, only Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) and Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) got their top choices, becoming members of the Economics Committee and the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee respectively.
However, Freddy Lim (林昶佐) was allotted a seat on the Foreign and National Defense Committee instead of the Education and Culture Committee, which went to Amis Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal, who was hoping for a place on the Internal Administration Committee governing Aboriginal affairs.
“If the larger parties have the generosity to let smaller parties pick from their areas of expertise, that would be a better way to handle it,” Huang, who doubles as the NPP’s executive chairman, said as he echoed comments by People First Party Legislator Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞).
Huang, who rose to prominence during the 2012 movement against monopolization of the media, was placed on the Finance Committee instead of the Transportation Committee, which has jurisdiction over the National Communications Commission, which regulates the media.
The Organic Law of Legislative Committees (立法院各委員會組織法) stipulates that parties that have too few legislators to qualify for seats on any of the legislature’s eight committees will have their committee membership determined by drawing lots.
Committee membership lasts for a year and lawmakers are allowed to trade positions if they fail to draw their preferred committee.
Parties with more than eight legislators are allotted committee membership proportionally and can directly submit committee membership lists.
In related news, Deputy Legislative Speaker Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) yesterday met with Social Democratic Party (SDP) officials to discuss legislative reform as the party grapples with its future after failing to win any seats in last month’s legislative elections.
SDP spokesman Chen Shang-chih (陳尚志) said that the party would seek to attract new members, but that specific plans would have wait until a new governing committee is elected next month.
The party has about 100 members, he said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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