Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) yesterday urged the Executive Yuan to submit a draft bill regulating how the government deals with cross-strait agreements for legislative review as soon as possible.
He said the government first proposed a similar draft bill in 1997 and again in 1999 when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was in power, but the bills never cleared the legislative floor.
Wang has repeatedly called on the Cabinet to refer such a draft bill for legislative review.
When receiving Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) on June 16, Wang presented a draft proposal written by the Legislative Yuan’s Organic Laws and Statutes Bureau, which suggested that any cross-strait agreements must be approved by the Executive Yuan and go through a confidential cross-party negotiation in the Legislative Yuan.
The proposal also said legislators should participate in cross-strait negotiation if necessary.
Citing Article 95 of the Statute Governing the Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例), Wang said the article stipulated that any direct business transactions and direct links between Taiwan and China had to be approved by the legislature.
Wang said he believed introducing a legislative oversight mechanism to the cross-strait negotiation process would help reduce public concerns about the government’s cross-strait policy.
Wang said the mechanism included reactivating the legislature’s cross-strait affairs task force.
In November 2000, the Legislative Yuan established a task force to “supervise cross-strait affairs and the government’s execution and decisions in response to other major incidents.”
Organic regulations of the task force stipulate that it consist of 25 members, with each legislative caucus occupying a certain number of seats based on its number of legislative seats. However, the task force has not played an active role in cross-strait affairs over the past years.
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇), head of the Internal Administration Committee, was critical of the task force’s authority.
Wu said the task force’s function might infringe upon the committee’s authority to supervise the Mainland Affairs Council and the SEF.
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