Owing to the combined majority of the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), the legislature last week voted to further extend the current session to the end of next month, prolonging the session twice for a total of 211 days, the longest in Taiwan’s democratic history.
Legally, the legislature holds two regular sessions annually: from February to May, and from September to December. The extensions pushed by the opposition in May and last week mean there would be no break between the first and second sessions this year.
While the opposition parties said the extensions were needed to review urgent bills, legislative proceedings show that among the more than 2,600 pending bills, only 15 had completed the required three readings in the first four months of this session, much fewer than the previous session. More worrisome, in the extended June-to-July period so far, most plenary meetings were hastily dismissed, averaging only 27.5 minutes — the shortest since 2008.
The itineraries of the eight standing committees showed that legislators, mostly from opposition parties, had arranged at least 163 inspection tours this session and a historical 40 percent of committee meetings were skipped.
As the nation prepares to hold mass recall votes against 31 KMT lawmakers tomorrow and on Aug. 23, the legislative extensions have further demonstrated the inefficiency and indolence of the opposition-led legislature, sparking more public criticism and discontent.
Citing as an example the legislature’s shelving of the central government’s NT$5 trillion (US$170 billion) subsidiary budget, Citizen Congress Watch decried opposition legislators’ incompetence in reviewing budgets, saying they aimed to further paralyze the government’s operations, which had already been hit by the opposition’s massive and unconstitutional budget cuts.
The legislative extension is also widely seen as a “legislative umbrella” to shield embattled KMT legislators from the law and the recall vote. Several KMT lawmakers allegedly involved in forging signatures for the petitions to recall Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers could therefore avoid judicial investigation or detention. Meanwhile, instead of deliberating the piles of proposals in the legislature, KMT lawmakers facing recalls could devote more time to campaigning against their ouster.
The extensions also mean the opposition could continue to pass controversial bills that benefit themselves, even if they put Taiwan’s stability and security at risk. For example, after slashing the government’s proposed budget, opposition legislators pushed through a controversial NT$10,000 universal cash handout, which would worsen government debt and increase public expenditure by NT$235 billion.
Aside from cutting or freezing the defense budget, KMT legislators have also proposed amending the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例) that would transfer authority over Taiwan’s restricted waters close to China from the Ministry of National Defense to the Ocean Affairs Council. That would put Taiwan’s sovereignty and territorial security at risk amid China’s escalating maritime coercion and threats. Another KMT proposal to create a “free-trade zone” on outlying islands has also raised concerns that it could open “a backdoor” for Chinese goods, allowing it to circumvent US tariffs and undermine Taiwan’s efforts to create a non-red supply chain.
It was the opposition lawmakers’ controversial and unconstitutional legislation that gave rise to the mass recall movement. The unprecedented extensions of the legislative session has given the recall movement another reason to remove unfit lawmakers and straighten out the Legislative Yuan — an imperative task to safeguard Taiwan’s democracy and sovereignty.
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Twenty-four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are facing recall votes on Saturday, prompting nearly all KMT officials and lawmakers to rally their supporters over the past weekend, urging them to vote “no” in a bid to retain their seats and preserve the KMT’s majority in the Legislative Yuan. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had largely kept its distance from the civic recall campaigns, earlier this month instructed its officials and staff to support the recall groups in a final push to protect the nation. The justification for the recalls has increasingly been framed as a “resistance” movement against China and
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