Despite being invited, officials from the Presidential Office and National Security Council declined to report to the legislature yesterday about the president's decision on the unification council and guidelines, irking opposition lawmakers, who passed a motion of condemnation and threatened to more fiercely boycott government budgets.
"Some of the budgets of the Presidential Office and National Security Council are still frozen and more budgets will be affected in the future," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator John Wu (
Irritated by the absence of National Security Council (NSC) Secretary-General Chiou I-ren (
PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES
As the denunciation motion does not render any concrete effect, Wu said his caucus was considering amending the Law Governing Legislators' Exercise of Power (
"If the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] administration has the guts to cease the functions of the unification council and unification guidelines, they should have the guts to offer a clear account of the decision to the public," Wu said.
Chiou and Chen were invited by the committee to deliver reports on President Chen Shui-bian's (
Claiming that the Presidential Office is not required by the Constitution to answer to the legislature, Mark Chen and Chiou declined the committee's invitation.
Wu, upon learning that the pair had declined to attend on Friday, said that he had telephoned them both and obtained promises that they would send their deputies to yesterday's meeting.
"However, I'm sorry to see that they failed to make good on their promises," Wu said.
In response to the officials' decision not to attend the committee meeting, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (
He linked the incident to the Presidential Office's request for the president to give an address to the legislature.
"[The issue of] whether to accept the president's state of the nation address or even how to arrange it must conform to the nation's laws and regulations," Wang said.
According to the Presidential Office's plan, the president would give a state of the nation address but would not take questions from lawmakers after the speech.
"While the president is not obliged by the Constitution to be questioned by lawmakers, we have to respect lawmakers' opinions about the format," Wang said.
The committee meeting, which had been scheduled to begin at 9am, was postponed to 9:30am and then again to 10:30am because the 11 member committee failed to reach quorum.
Four out of five pan-blue committee members showed up in the afternoon session, while four out of six of their pan-green counterparts attended the meeting.
KMT Legislator Joanna Lei (
"Some people complain that opposition parties do a poor job in overseeing the performance of the ruling party," Lei said. "How do they expect us to do a good job when the ruling party is so unreasonable and malevolent."
KMT Legislator Kuo Su-chun (郭素春) grumbled about Mark Chen, who had showed up at the legislature to visit Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and discuss the president's request to deliver a state of the nation address to the legislature.
"We are not so vicious that we would kill him with a knife. We just want him to come here to say hello," she said.
"We would be happy to get him over here in a sedan if we have one," she added.
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