More than 100 people from different walks of life participated in the first civic evaluation of legislators, organized by Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) yesterday, analyzing legislators’ performances despite the difficulty posed by limited transparency in the legislature.
“This is a historic moment, because this is the first time anyone has invited so many people to evaluate lawmakers,” CCW chairman Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) told the group of citizen-evaluators gathered in Taipei.
“The Constitution stipulates that anyone over 20 ... is entitled to vote,” he said. “But our rights — and responsibility — do not end at the ballot box. Instead, we should monitor those we’ve chosen to represent our voices.”
Top performing legislators on the eight legislative committees were: the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) John Wu (吳志揚) on the Internal Administration Committee, the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲) on the Foreign and National Defense Committee, the KMT’s Chiu Ching-chun (邱鏡淳) on the Economics Committee, Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) on the Finance Committee, the KMT’s Nancy Chao (趙麗雲) on the Education and Culture Committee, the DPP’s Yeh Yi-jin (葉宜津) on the Transportation Committee, the DPP’s William Lai (賴清德) on the Sanitation, Environment, Social Welfare and Labor Committee, and the DPP’s Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) on the Judiciary and Organic Law and Statutes Committee.
The evaluators included academics, journalists, representatives from non-governmental organizations, businesspeople and students. They were put into eight groups, with each group assessing one of the eight legislative committees.
“We are selecting the best and worst-performing lawmakers,” Ku said. “Awards will be presented to the best-performing legislators on each committee in public, and we hope those with the lowest rankings will try to improve.”
Sixty percent of a legislator’s “grade” was based on attendance, how often the legislator spoke at meetings during the last legislative session and whether he or she signed the agreement to improve legislative transparency, CCW executive director Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) said.
“The other 40 percent will be based on ... a legislator’s number of legislative proposals, whether he or she has any outstanding attributes, has proposed any ‘sunshine bills,’ violated any legislative regulations, been indicted or made any legislative proposals that could benefit a particular group of people,” Ho said.
After an intense discussion among evaluators that lasted four hours, the lawmakers’ grades were finally released.
Evaluators said the limited transparency in the legislature had posed a challenge in judging legislators’ individual performances.
“Attendance, the number of proposals and how many times a legislator spoke during the past legislative session decide a large percentage of the final grade he or she receives,” said Yen Mei-chuan (顏美娟), convener of the group assessing the Internal Administration Committee.
“But we don’t know whether a lawmaker actually sat through the meeting or left right after signing the attendance roll, or what he or she said at the meeting,” she said.
“Based on the limited information, we can only give the best grade to those who don’t act inappropriately and not to those who actually perform the job well,” she said.
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