The DPP central standing committee yesterday ordered the party's National Assembly deputies to abandon their rights, including salaries and any other subsidies, during their extended term, but said it would not punish those deputies who supported the term extension amendment.
The party demanded that all the deputies give up their salaries to prove their determination for parliamentary reform, a party spokesman said.
"DPP assembly deputies have successfully achieved the party's platform of freezing further Assembly elections. Now they have agreed to give up their rights as deputies during the extended term to prove their purpose was not simply to benefit themselves," said Yu Shyh-kun, DPP secretary-general.
Chen Chin-deh (陳金德), a DPP assembly caucus leader, said 80 percent of DPP deputies had agreed to forgo all monetary benefits associated with their extended term.
The DPP received plenty of telephone calls from supporters after the assembly passed the term extension amendment. They severely criticized the DPP for betraying its principles and destroying its image as a force of democratic reform.
Yu said the DPP had aimed to show the party's determination for reform by initiating a movement to abolish the Assembly through a referendum, which was the platform adopted by DPP presidential candidate Chen Shui-bian (
"First, the DPP will call for signatures in a public petition appealing to the government to hold a referendum on the issue. Then we hope to restart negotiations with the KMT to carry out the task of abolishing the Assembly," Yu said.
DPP legislator Chang Chun-hung (
"President Lee may want to sum up his constitutional reform mission before stepping down. The DPP should grasp this opportunity to accomplish the historical mission [of rewriting the Constitution]," he said.
"The assembly's constitutional amendment session has successfully frozen the Assembly's delegate election," Chang stressed. "DPP headquarters ought to organize a task force immediately to carry out the mission of rewriting the Constitution next year." Chang also appealed to DPP leaders to include this issue in the party's presidential platform.
"To advocate rewriting the Constitution may have some negative impact in the short term, but it will bring huge concrete benefits to the DPP presidential candidate in the end," Chang said.
However, most faction leaders opposed Chang's remark, saying that to rewrite the constitution before May 20 next year -- the inauguration ceremony day of the new president -- would rekindle many ideological and ethnic disputes.
"If we advocated formally rewriting the Constitution or the drawing up of a new Basic Law, the DPP will be blamed as a troublemaker by both domestic public opinion and the international community," said Wu Nai-jen (
"This issue [of drawing up the Basic Law] will negatively impact our candidate during the presidential campaign," said DPP legislative caucus leader Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁).
Meanwhile, Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) yesterday reaffirmed his platform, saying that a national constitutional conference would be held to discuss rewriting the Constitution to set up a three-branch presidential system of government with a unicameral parliamentary system if he is elected president.
"The most important constitutional task we have to accomplish now is to reform the current five-branch government and put an end to the National Assembly," Chen told foreign political party repre-sentatives in Taipei yesterday.
But Chen refused to comment on Chang Chun-hung's suggestion about rewriting the Constitution before president Lee's term ends, saying only that he would respect the party's decision.
Yu said that the central standing committee came to a consensus yesterday that pushing for a new Constitution was not suitable until after the election.
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