The legislature began its new session on Friday last week on a tone little changed from the last one. Lawmakers shouted over each other as a motion was proposed to send next year’s annual budget back to the Procedure Committee for only the second time in history, fingers were pointed across the aisle and at Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), as he smiled in exasperation. Cho later went off script during his policy report, saying he believed the legislature would understand the budget plan with the proper explanation — a thinly veiled rebuke sure to fall on deaf ears.
In a moment of deja vu, the Taiwan People’s Party voted with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to send the budget back, their 59-vote majority overwhelming the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) 46 votes. This means discussion on government budgets will have to be rescheduled before even reaching the first reading, which is the prerequisite for committee deliberations. Yesterday, opposition lawmakers on the committee voted not to add the budget to the agenda for Friday and Tuesday next week. It does not bode well for this legislative session, which typically decides the budgets for the coming fiscal year before the end of December.
As the votes were tallied on Friday, opposition lawmakers chanted “support indigenous people, support farmers” as justification for their stunt. The KMT caucus said it sent the budgets back because the Cabinet failed to include in its proposal items that legislators had passed earlier this year. In particular, they took issue with its omission of a proposal to raise the government price for public food stock by NT$5 per kilogram and to double annual compensation to indigenous people for not logging on their own lands. It also criticized proposed funding for Taiwan Power Co to subsidize heavy losses and high budgets for policy promotion.
Advocating for underprivileged communities is noble, but using them as a political tool is another matter. And voters can tell the difference.
The government in return has argued that both proposals were forced through the legislature in a similar manner and cannot or should not be implemented. A NT$3 rice buy-in hike in 2011 caused an explosion in rice planting that ultimately drove down prices, harming the same farmers it sought to help. As for logging compensation, the DPP argues that a constitutional interpretation would be necessary, as Article 70 of the Constitution stipulates that the legislature may not propose increases in expenditures proposed by the Executive Yuan.
Setting aside who might be right, this is not the way to go about lawmaking. The legislative chamber is there for competing interests to hash out their differences and find compromise for the sake of their constituents. Halting all discussion by returning the bills to the Procedure Committee is in no one’s interest, and sets a grim tone for the rest of the session. Considering how the last one went — with thousands taking to the streets in protest, hundreds of important proposals left languishing and the Constitutional Court waiting to weigh in — the nation should buckle in for another wild ride over the next few months.
Earlier this month, the KMT and the DPP laid out a raft of priorities for the upcoming session. Both put budget negotiations at the top of their lists, in addition to a slew of other bills ranging from whistle-blower protections to personnel appointments. Lawmakers should take heed of their own stated objectives and think of how they could actually be accomplished. However that might be, it is surely not by boycotting whatever comes across their desks that they do not like.
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