Lawmakers stuck on finance board

The Legislative Yuan's finance committee failed to pass a draft of the Financial Supervisory Board Organization Law (金監會組織法) yesterday. The committee passed 35 of the 36 articles in the draft, only to get bogged down in heavy debate over Article 9 -- the line up of the nine-member committee of the board itself.

According to the draft, all agencies currently responsible for regulating the financial services sector will be integrated into four bureaus of the new supervisory board. The four bureaus include the financial examination bureau, banking bureau, securities and futures bureaus and insurance bureau.

Discussion over how the nine members on the committee will be elected generated three very different proposals from the Chen administration and from opposition parties.

According to the Cabinet's proposal, the independent supervisory board would be comprised of a politically appointed chairman, two vice chairmen, the finance minister and central bank governor who would double as board members. Four financial experts would also be appointed. All members would be nominated by the premier and approved by the president.

The opposition, however, suggests that nomination of the four experts should be made by the nation's top four political parties including the KMT, DPP, People First Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union.

A proposal offered by the KMT is that the nine members be approved by the Legislative Yuan rather than the president.

In order to pass the draft as early as possible, the Cabinet may change its stance and support the proposal made by the opposition that the four largest political parties recommend four of the board's members. "We have higher degree of tolerance that the four members [of the new board] be recommended by political parties," Chinese-language media quoted Cabinet Secretary-General Chiou I-jen (邱義仁) after a meeting held at the Presidential Office on Tuesday.

However, Chjou's suggestion was strongly opposed by DPP's legislative whip, Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯).

"The DPP caucus insists that the nine members should be nominated by the Premier and approved by the president," said Tsai.

The differing positions were not resolved during a negotiating session between ruling and opposition parties yesterday afternoon.

KMT legislator Liu Kuang-hua (劉光華), who chaired yesterday's inter-party legislative negotiations, said the talks would continue this afternoon.

"Were the negotiations to fail, the final decision would be made at the legislators' general meeting," Liu said earlier this week.

One pundit said that no matter which proposal was adopted, the DPP would dominate the nine-member board.

"Since five members of the board, including the chairman, two deputy chairmen, deputy finance minister and deputy governor of the Central Bank, will all be elected by the DPP administration, the DPP is going to dominate the majority anyway. It makes little difference where the remaining four members come from," said Lee Tong-how (李桐豪), a finance professor at National Chengchi University.