Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party lawmakers today voted to shelve a proposal from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to elect a new speaker.
The DPP caucus proposed a new election for speaker as part of the Legislative Yuan’s agenda for the second time in a week.
The DPP caucus moved to elect a new speaker on Friday last week, saying that Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) failed to uphold the responsibilities of the position after he delayed the submission of two controversial bills to President William Lai (賴清德).
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Although the caucus sought to invoke Article 8 of the Regulations on Electing the Legislative Speaker and Deputy Speaker by Legislators (立法委員互選院長副院長辦法), Deputy Legislative Speaker Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) suspended the proposal, saying it had already been handled by the Procedure Committee earlier that week.
On Dec. 20, the legislature passed the third reading of amendments to the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) and Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法).
In a Procedure Committee meeting at noon today, the DPP caucus again sought to add the legislative speaker vote to the agenda for Friday’s session, but the committee accepted the proposal from the KMT caucus instead.
In related news, KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Szu-ming (林思銘) said a second review of the Constitutional Court Procedure Act is on the agenda for Friday, but needs further discussion between the parties.
The Executive Yuan on Thursday last week received approval from Lai to request the legislature reconsider the amendment.
Although the ruling and opposition parties discussed a timetable for the review process, no final decision was reached.
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