Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday fumed over the “deliberate absence” of their Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) colleagues at a meeting of the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee, which had been scheduled to review proposed amendments to the Red Cross Society Act of the Republic of China (中華民國紅十字會法).
Eleven DPP lawmakers and one from the New Power Party (NPP) failed to show up for yesterday’s meeting, KMT Legislator and committee convener Alicia Wang (王育敏) said.
Wang said the DPP and NPP lawmakers’ “deliberate absence” — which led to a lack of quorum — was “a serious dereliction of duty.”
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
KMT Legislator Lee Yan-hsiu (李彥秀) said the DPP and NPP lawmakers were employing “majoritarian violence.”
Academics and industry representatives, as well as KMT and DPP legislators, discussed the abolition of the act at a public hearing on June 2, Wang said, adding that “most of those present acknowledged the raison d’etre of the act.”
Wang said she had planned committee sessions yesterday and today for the review of more than six amendment bills and bills calling for the abolition of the act.
“This is totally in line with the due legislative procedure of bill reviewing,” she said. “It is therefore regrettable and condemnable that the 10 DPP lawmakers and one NPP lawmaker who sit on the committee intentionally boycotted the legislative meeting.”
“They constitute an absolute majority compared with the KMT’s four seats on the committee,” she added.
Wang said that the DPP and NPP caucuses had reached an agreement that the act should be abolished, and they therefore proposed an extempore motion on May 3 on the legislative floor for the bill calling for the act’s abolition to be passed immediately without referring it to the committee.
“It shows that party politics, rather than professionalism and rule of law, is what they act upon,” Wang said.
NPP caucus convener Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) yesterday said that the KMT caucus’ desire to review the proposed amendments was a “stunt.”
He said that the KMT caucus had called for cross-caucus negotiations on the abolition bill in order to block its passage when it was proposed that the bill should be passed without going through committee review on May 3, and the NPP caucus had convened the negotiation on May 24, when no conclusion was achieved because KMT lawmakers walked out of the negotiation.
“The KMT caucus is now trying to review a bill that has already been sent to the general assembly pending a final vote. What is this if not a political stunt?” Hsu asked.
“If the KMT really does cherish the Red Cross Society, it should [agree to] the abolition of the act, which [gives the society unsupervised privileges and] allows the group to be governed by the Civil Associations Act (人民團體法) and the Charity Donations Destined For Social Welfare Funds Implementation Regulations (公益勸募條例) that could see the group properly supervised,” Hsu said.
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