Reform is necessary to improve the quality of the legislature, academics said at a forum in Taipei yesterday.
"Some Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] lawmakers attend more of their supporters' wedding banquets and funerals than they do legislative meetings. They also spend more time thinking about how to get re-elected or how to earn back the money they spent on their election campaigns," said Yang Jih-ching (楊日清), a political science professor at National Chengchi University. "The KMT should have a system to prevent such legislators from being nominated again."
Yang spoke at a forum hosted by National Taiwan University political science professor Chang Lin-cheng (張麟徵). The forum was called to discuss whether the newly reduced legislature will prove more efficient than its predecessors.
For the new legislative session due to convene on Feb. 1, the number of legislative seats has been reduced from 225 to 113, with the KMT securing 81 seats in the Jan. 12 legislative elections.
KMT Legislator Joanna Lei (
"For example, at the moment, cross-party negotiation processes are not open to the public -- only the final results are," she said, adding that much maneuvering went on behind the scenes.
While all other legislative meetings are recorded, "the recordings can only be viewed from within the legislature. We need to make them public," Lei said.
Lei ran in the Jan. 12 elections as a representative of the New Party. However, none of the party's candidates will be able to enter the Legislative Yuan, as the New Party only received 4 percent of the second ballot.
Lei said that more legislation was required to keep the legislature in check.
"Only when there is total transparency and regulated lobbying and conflict of interest avoidance will legislative politics become `clean,'" she said.
On whether the new legislature -- with the KMT holding a comfortable two-thirds majority -- would become a one-party "legislative monster," Alexander Lu (
"I wouldn't worry that the election result would create a setback in democracy, because the change in the electoral system was agreed upon by all major political parties, and the new legislature is a result of a direct election," he said.
"In other words, it's a reflection of the will of the people," Lu said.
Lu said the new status quo could help to make the legislature more efficient.
"Now the KMT is fully responsible for what happens in the legislature. If it does a bad job, the majority could go to another party in the next election," Lu said.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
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INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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