While legislators waited around last Thursday for a scheduled meeting of the transport committee -- a meeting that never actually materialized -- one DPP lawmaker spoke of a United Daily News report alleging many lawmakers have been busy lately taking private foreign trips, while requesting the government pick up the tab.
"You see how the media has criticized us?" he told his colleagues in the conference room.
"Take it easy," answered a KMT legislator. "After all, A-bian (Chen Shui-bian, 陳水扁) hasn't been inaugurated yet."
The same day, nearly all the legislative committee meetings were canceled due to a lack of quorum. The same was true the following day, as well.
The fact that the legislature has become something of a "ghost town" is easy to explain. The caucuses from the major parties had agreed after the presidential election that the interpolation session -- during which lawmakers question the Cabinet in person -- would not take place before the new president is inaugurated on May 20. In the meantime, they agreed, lawmakers would focus on reviewing draft bills.
But what happened last week appeared to tell another story, as committee meetings were canceled because of a lack of quorum. This coming week, as well, at least two committees have canceled meetings to make room for foreign "inspection" trips.
"I've just received a document today which informed me of a four-day trip next week to Malaysia for a military weapons exhibition," Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆), a New Party legislator and a member from the Defense Committee, told the Taipei Times on Saturday. Nobody knows how much Lai and his counterparts at the Defense Committee can learn from the exhibition in Malaysia, but Lai himself admitted the "oddity" of the timing of the scheduled trip.
At this time, before administrative power is transferred from the KMT to the DPP, Lai said, it's likely that officials could be deliberately eating through their budgets as a favor to others and at little cost to themselves.
"Government officials may try to give away whatever they can, so theoretically committee meetings here at the legislature should be supervising the operation of government agencies," Lai said. Such supervision, he said, would ensure public resources are not wasted before the transfer in May.
"But now, committee meetings are being either canceled or replaced by things like inspections and visits," he added. "It's deplorable to see how public resources are being wasted."
Lai's laments, however, received little sympathy at the legislature last Friday when he raised his voice to question the meeting cancellations.
"One KMT legislator criticized me as not being sensible, adding that it involved the internal affairs of lawmakers and should not be revealed in public," he said.
But the local media has not stopped reporting on what the KMT legislator dubbed to be lawmakers' "internal affairs," with some media reports unraveling cases in which lawmakers reportedly tried to squeeze resources from the administrative branch for their own, personal, foreign tourist trips -- all under the name of "inspections."
When asked where lawmakers have disappeared to lately, Chieh Chung (掀仲), an assistant to New Party legislator Cheng Lung-shui (鄭龍水), was quick to respond.
"They have been busy making on-the-spot investigations," Chieh said.
Chieh referred to one case which he claimed "everybody in the Legislative Yuan has heard of lately" -- a case also exposed in the United Daily News.
Chieh said a DPP legislator elected from Nantou County had sent a document -- in the name of a legislative committee -- to the transport ministry, applying for financial subsidies for an inspection trip to Japan.
"To issue such a document in the name of a legislative committee means that the lawmaker had tried to use the name of the legislature to pressure the administrative branch [for funds]. Under such circumstances, it's almost impossible for the ministry to refuse the request, so the ministry is forced to issue the money [to subsidize the trip]," Chieh said.
In the end, the ministry finally requested eleven branches under the ministry to share the allocation for the trip of about NT$1.5 million, he said.
DPP legislator Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) said he had not heard of the case. But he said there have been precedents in which the administrative branch paid for lawmakers' work-related trips, an arrangement he considered reasonable.
"But if the administrative branch was forced to pay for lawmakers' trips that are not relevant to work, but are being covered under the name of inspection, that's not justifiable," Tsai said.
Lai said it is difficult to collect direct evidence to prove the case revealed by the United Daily News and confirmed by Chieh.
"Such evidence is difficult to collect as some lawmakers have perfected the art of evading detection," he said. Although the case in question is disputed, some legislators said the tendency to request administrative branches to subsidize lawmakers' foreign trips loomed large after some 40 former Taiwan provincial assembly members were elected to the legislature.
"Maybe many of the former provincial assembly members are used to that [interaction between the administrative and legislative branches]," said lawmaker Hsieh Chi-ta (謝啟大).
Some lawmakers, furthermore, have tried to justify the recent "ghost town" atmosphere here at the legislature.
Tsai said it's normally the case during a power transfer that neither the legislative nor the administrative branch have cared much about their nominal duties.
"Even if we invited ministers to our committee meetings and fired loads of questions at them, neither side would be very keen, as the ministers are leaving office in a few weeks," Tsai said.
Lai, however, disagreed.
"There are still some lawmakers who want to do something now, but it's a pity that they were unable to push for anything," he said, now that many of the scheduled meetings have been canceled.
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