A Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker yesterday said President William Lai (賴清德) should convene a national affairs advisory meeting that would include opposition leaders, in a bid to help resolve the legislative and public controversy over a series of reform bills.
If Lai decides to convene such a meeting, he should invite KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Hsu Yu-chen (許宇甄) said.
Hsu made the suggestion after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) called for cross-party discussions in the legislature to establish game rules for the passage of bills.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Lawmakers of the governing and opposition parties have been at loggerheads for the past few weeks over a series of legislative reform bills that were put forward by opposition parties to expand the legislature’s power of oversight with regard to the president and the executive branch of the government.
Hsu yesterday said that while Taiwanese voters in January gave the DPP a record third consecutive term electing Lai as president, they opted not to return the DPP to its absolute majority in the 113-seat legislature.
That decision gave the KMT and the TPP the role of supervising the ruling party, Hsu said, referring to the two opposition parties’ combined 60 seats in the Legislature.
The KMT holds 52 seats, the TPP eight and the DPP 51, while two independent legislators are politically aligned with the KMT.
Against that backdrop, the KMT and the TPP put forward their versions of the legislative reform bills on government oversight, Hsu said.
Contrary to what the DPP has said, there were no underhand operations to circumvent the normal deliberation and review process of the bills, Hsu said, adding that the real problem is that the DPP does not want to be supervised.
When the DPP was in opposition, it proposed legislative reform bills that were much stiffer than those currently under review, she said.
Now that the DPP has been in power for so many years, it does not want supervisory reforms, she added.
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