After two rounds of voting, the Legislative Yuan on April 12 finally approved a decision by its Discipline Committee to punish independent lawmaker Lo Fu-chu
Interestingly, it was not a hollow remark. Minutes from the Legislative Yuan's meeting attest to the truth of it. Only 73 percent of all lawmakers attended the meeting that discussed Lo's punishment. Apart from the New Party, there were legislators missing from all the other political parties -- a testament to how many "friends" Lo has and how much support he enjoys across party lines.
Even though all the parties had issued "class-A mobilization"
So we can see the extent of Lo's close relations with the KMT. Lo campaigned for Lien Chan
It will be interesting to see how the KMT will deal with lawmakers who flouted its orders. Of course, voting against the punishment and abstaining from the vote amounted to open defiance, but avoiding the meeting under various pretexts was a form of passive resistance. According to reports, KMT spokeswoman Chen Feng-shin (
It is not that the KMT does not have the power to punish its lawmakers. It was simply a case of deliberately downplaying the issue and looking on while the party's lawmakers went ahead and supported Lo. For whatever reasons, the KMT has added one more blot to its public image and again made itself a target of
criticism.
Worse still, the party has flushed its own authority and credibility down the drain by not cracking the whip over a class-A mobilization order. How can the party ever stress the importance of a mobilization after setting such a precedent? Perhaps the party will need to read the moods of its "friends" before issuing another mobilization order.
Chin Heng-wei is editor-in-chief of Contemporary Monthly magazine.
Translated by Francis Huang
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