The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus urged the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday, Constitution Day, to realize its promise of assisting with constitutional reform.
"We hope the KMT will clearly tell the public again whether it still stands by its promise to the DPP to achieve three major constitutional reforms," said DPP legislative caucus leader Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁).
Those goals, Chen said, include reducing by half the number of seats in the legislature, giving people the right of initiative to amend the Constitution, and inserting an article on assets stolen by political parties into the Constitution.
"We remember that KMT caucus leader Lee Chia-chin (
"The KMT originally said the initiative article was the people's basic right and this mechanism should be written into the Referendum Law," Chen said. "However, it revoked the article of initiative from its referendum bill, which demonstrated that the party is continually cheating the people of Taiwan," he said.
According to the newly passed Referendum Law, only the Legislative Yuan can propose a constitutional amendment.
Chen said the DPP wished to hammer out the entire legislative procedure for constitutional amendments on legislative reform before the end of this session, but added the KMT reversed its stance on the issue and now blocks any move by the DPP at the Legislative Yuan.
DPP Legislator Lai Ching-te (
Lai said the four major parties signed on during the 2001 legislative election to support the reforms, which included reducing the number of legislative seats and replacing the multi-member district, one-vote electoral system with a single-member district, two-vote system.
"The KMT even signed on to support investigating all political parties' assets and to insert an article into the Constitution stating that parties cannot own companies," Lai said. "It is obvious that the KMT has retreated from its position."
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