Lunch meetings between Cabinet officials and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators are to be held on a weekly basis in a bid to improve communication between the Executive Yuan and the Legislative Yuan on major policy decisions, Premier Lin Chuan (林全) said.
The move is perceived to be Lin’s response to allegations over the past few weeks that he had failed to coordinate with DPP lawmakers on a several issues, ranging from the future of nuclear power to traffic management on freeways during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday weekend.
There has been substantial backlash against the party caucus over its perceived failure to deliver on President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) promise for her administration to establish better teamwork between the Cabinet and the legislature, with DPP legislators quoted by sources as telling Lin that caucus members were tired of “learning about policy decisions from newspaper reports.”
Lin yesterday promised to convene informal “lunch box meetings” at least once per week or when the need arises, which are to be attended by Cabinet officials and DPP lawmakers on relevant legislative committees, a proposal that has so far met with the approval of DPP legislators.
DPP Legislator Yeh Yi-chin (葉宜津), the convener of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, hailed the establishment of the meetings as “a positive development,” adding that lawmakers might be able to help the Cabinet with policymaking due to their understanding of public opinion.
DPP Legislator Huang Kuo-shu (黃國書), the convener of the Education and Culture Committee, said that coupling the Cabinet’s administrative expertise with the lawmakers’ understanding of public opinion would be beneficial to policy implementation.
DDP Legislator Liu Shih-fang (劉世芳), the convener of the Foreign and National Defense Committee, said that while she welcomes more communication, the Cabinet needs to make the meetings “substantively meaningful” forums for policy discussions and avoid treating them as “public relations exercises.”
She added that the Cabinet should address specific concerns that had arisen from its past interactions with lawmakers and improve coordination between its departments and agencies.
Yeh said that Tsai’s administration has so far established three weekly policy forums: the DPP’s regular legislative caucus meeting on Fridays; executive-legislative conferences; and the legislative committees’ permanent policy working groups on Mondays, as well as the newly announced lunch meetings.
There should be no concerns about the forums being redundant, because they coordinate policymaking at different levels of government, Yeh said.
The DPP caucus meetings were designed to facilitate a DPP legislative consensus, while the executive-legislative conferences were created to establish the preliminary groundwork for policies, leaving the coordination of major policy items that involve multiple government agencies to Lin’s lunch meetings.
Huang said that, while the Cabinet has met with more difficulties than he first anticipated, it has consistently shown respect to lawmakers and he believes its performance will improve with time.
“Friction will help to smooth out effective channels of communication,” Liu said.
DPP Legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said mechanisms for coordination are being created as situations develop, adding: “The process is being fine-tuned; it is better than nothing.”
However, the lawmakers said they have not been informed on the date or agenda of the first lunch meeting that Lin is to convene.
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