Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) lawmakers blocked the special arms purchase bill and other major government bills at the legislature's Procedures Committee yesterday, triggering a call by a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator for the opposition to show some modesty.
DPP Legislator Kuan Pi-ling (管碧玲) said the pan-blue camp won 660,000 more votes last Saturday than in the previous election while the pan-green camp won 30,000 more.
This means that KMT Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Humility, apparently, was not in the opposition's vocabulary, as pan-blue lawmakers continued to refuse Chen's nominations for the Control Yuan.
They also killed off a DPP proposal to invite the president to make a national security report to the legislature, knowing he would use the opportunity to lobby for the arms procurement bill.
Also blocked from being put on the legislative agenda were 20-some other DPP-proposed bills, including amendments to the Referendum Law (
Among the blocked bills was a Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) proposal that calls for the legislature to set up a "files-studying committee" to tackle party assets that had been obtained through dubious means.
What the DPP and KMT caucuses did agree to tackle on Friday's legislative session were amendments to the banking law concerning the excessively high interest rates on credit cards and the issue of many young people overusing their credit cards and becoming "slaves to credit cards."
Meanwhile, the KMT threatened to put to vote a bill regarding opening Taipei's Sungshan Airport to flights to Macau and Hong Kong if all parties fail to come up with an agreement on the issue after four months of negotiations.
Speaking at a news conference, KMT caucus whip Pan Wei-kang (
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