The legislature is set to begin work again after a quarrel over seating distribution in the Finance Committee resulted in five weeks of almost total paralysis.
Pressure finally forced the three major parties to reach a compromise in which the two principle opposition parties will each lose a seat on the Finance Committee but retain overall control.
The DPP and New Party together will control 11 seats on the 21-seat committee.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
Major bills awaiting Finance Committee review include those for a NT$500 billion National Stabilization Fund, reforms of local financial institutions and amendments to a lottery law aimed at superseding the so-called Gaming Article (
Since legislators who fail to get onto the Finance Committee must receive places on other committees, the failure to successfully select the Finance Committee has meant that the selection process for all committees has been held up -- meaning that no legislative review work has been done for five weeks.
The only action the legislature has been able to conduct is its twice-weekly plenum session.
The deadlock over the Finance Committee resulted from there being too many legislators seeking a seat on the committee, requiring the drawing of lots for seats. In the drawing, however, 22 lots were drawn by accident.
The first drawing produced a situation very favorable to the opposition parties with the DPP getting eight seats and the New Party five. As a result the parties refused to cooperate with a KMT demand to draw lots a second time.
The resulting inability to finalize the committee's make-up means that no committee work whatsoever could go forward.
In an apparent effort to break the deadlock, the KMT -- which enjoys a comfortable majority of 124 seats at the 225-seat legislature -- last week brought the issue to the plenum session.
It narrowly beat the opposition in a vote over whether to hold another round of lot-drawing. But the opposition would not accept the results, leaving the impasse unchanged.
After several rounds of negotiations, including one on Thursday in which KMT caucus whip Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) and New Party caucus leader Elmer Feng (馮?2? came to blows, a compromise was finally reached yesterday.
"Pressure from outside [the legislature] was so strong that we had to strike a settlement somehow," said Han when asked why a compromise was reached after five weeks of deadlock.
This was long overdue, said DPP caucus leader Chen Chi-mai (
"The legislature has severely tarnished its image by not holding meetings for so long," he said.
DPP Caucus member Cho Jung-tai (
During the month-long stand-off, little could be done in the legislature.
Frustrated by the deadlocks, many lawmakers have lamented the degeneration of the legislature.
"Now the legislature is even more useless than city or county councils," said DPP legislator Huang Erh-hsuan (
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