Taiwan's legislature reviewed and passed a handful of bills yesterday in a show of efficiency rarely matched by any other lawmaking body in the world. This feat is, however, nothing for the people of Taiwan to feel proud of. In reality, the last day of a legislative session is a time when all of Taiwan holds its breath, wondering what new monstrosity the lawmakers will pass, or what new problem they will create in their rush to clear their desks.
The "bane of Taiwan" is perhaps an apt description of the Legislative Yuan, where lawmakers spend entire sessions talking nonsense. Then, on the last day of the session, party whips hold closed-door meetings and exchange political favors willy-nilly in a bid to clear the backlog of bills. Many legislators are not informed of the negotiations and not allowed to participate. They can only vote on the final drafts, with little knowledge and less understanding of what they are passing, pushing through a heap of bills to create a "performance record." Actually people couldn't care less about the number of bills passed during any particular legislative session. What counts is the crude political maneuvers and the poor quality of the legislation that this rush to finish creates.
Being a minority group in the legislature, the DPP caucus cannot control the chamber's agenda. Its caucus leaders also lack the ability to coordinate between their members, the Cabinet and the opposition parties. Instead, their often emotional outbursts serve only to start new conflicts on the floor.
But in its first year as an opposition party the KMT, despite its 50-year experience in governance and its legislative majority, has not demonstrated any ability to control policies either. All it can do is boycott the ruling party at every twist and turn -- with help from the People First Party and the New Party. This was made abundantly clear yesterday by the opposition proposal for another review of the supplementary budgets -- as if the first review hadn't created a big enough logjam. The KMT's petulant move was apparently in retaliation for DPP caucus convener Chou Po-lun's (周伯倫) emotional call for the people of Taiwan to "settle their accounts" with the opposition.
Fortunately, media and public pressure forced the lawmakers to keep several pork-barrel budget bills, totaling a few trillion NT dollars, off of yesterday's agenda. But the defects of the existing partisan negotiation mechanism were blindingly obvious. Originally designed to improve the efficiency of legisla-tion, the mechanism -- whereby caucus representatives take part in the negotiations on behalf of their fellow caucus members -- has become simply a venue for backroom politicking. Democratic principles like transparency, debate or majority decision-making are notable by their absence in this representative of a "representative democracy."
It is high time legislative procedures were revised. Party caucuses should establish their own internal -- and democratic -- procedures for legislative review so that all caucus members can fully express their views when the bills are being reviewed by the relevant committees. Only solid internal consensus within all the caucuses can prevent individual members from blocking legislation after partisan agreements have been reached. Bills should be reviewed and partisan negotiations held on a regular basis throughout the session, not just on the last day. Enough time should be given to the review of each bill, in order to ensure the quality of the legislation.
"Order amid chaos" was the description used by speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
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