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Constitional reform plan generates heat

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus and the legislature's speaker yesterday stressed that the constitutional re-engineering work will be carried out in the legislature according to the blueprint laid out in the president's inaugural speech, but the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) continued to assail the president's vision for a new Constitution.

"The future constitutional amendment work will still get done in the legislature," DPP caucus director-general Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) said.

Tsai explained that the Constitutional Reform Committee proposed in the speech would be established at the same level as the National Development Conference (國發會), and in addition to experts and scholars, the committee members could include chairmen from each party.

"The Constitutional Reform Committee will work to form a consensus among the governing and opposition groups and provide directives for constitutional amendments. Issues such as whether we should lower the threshold for constitutional amendment bills in the legislature and whether the public can propose bills via referendum can be discussed in the committee," Tsai said.

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) also said that the president meant to return to the current framework to proceed with constitutional reform.

"The Constitutional Reform Committee will be an organization outside the existing mechanism, while the legislature's Constitutional Amendment Committee is the existing mechanism to deal with constitutional amendment bills. Both the governing and opposing parties have agreed that the constitutional amendment bills should continue to be handled by the legislature," Wang said.

The TSU legislative caucus, however, condemned the president for downgrading the task of drafting a new constitution into mere tinkering with the existing one.

They also demanded the president withdraw his remark that the Taiwanese public has yet to reach a consensus on Taiwan's sovereignty and said the TSU would take over the responsibility of drafting a new Constitution.

"There is a huge gap between the president's statement yesterday and [his original campaign] proposal to make a new constitution in 2006, and we cannot accept that," TSU caucus whip Chen Chien-ming (陳建銘) said.

"Constitutional reform is a very important issue which should involve everyone, and it should not be decided by the president alone," Chen said.

"The president proposed proceeding with constitutional amendment, and this is no different from the pan-blue camp's [ campaign] proposal. If the pan-blue camp could realize that proposal, then why do we need the DPP?" TSU legislator Lo Chih-ming (羅志明) said.

"The president's speech yesterday was pretty words in conciliatory language, and the president was sticking his hot face to China's cold bum," Lo said.

Meanwhile, Tsai and Wang also touched on the issue of the current constitutional amendment bill regarding legislative downsizing.

The caucuses have reached a preliminary decision to handle this bill in the sitting on May 28, but the bill will first undergo another inter-party negotiation hosted by Wang next Tuesday.

Tsai pointed out that it would be best if the DPP caucus did not have to resort to a vote on the bill because the bill was a significant index of the country's stability.

"We hope that the legislative speaker can help form a consensus among the caucuses, as a vote would be a bad strategy," Tsai said.
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