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EDITORIAL: Rush, lack of coordination in KMT
On the final day before the legislature adjourned for its winter recess on Wednesday last week, lawmakers once again rushed to push through a number of bills. However, the results show that lawmakers remain selective about which bills they want to be passed. It also demonstrates the inability of the administration to communicate and coordinate within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the executive branch and the legislative body.
Overall, the legislature on Tuesday finalized its review of the central government’s budget bill for this fiscal year and approved revisions to 14 laws, including amendments to the Communication Security and Surveillance Act (通訊保障及監察法), the Medical Care Act (醫療法), the Postal Savings and Remittances Act (郵政儲金匯兌法) and the Supervisory Regulations Governing Multilevel Marketing (多層次傳銷管理法).
Lawmakers believe those revisions are important to the public and crucial to the nation’s development. For instance, the amended Communication Security and Surveillance Act imposes stricter rules on the use of wiretaps, the revised Medical Care Act provides for a heavier punishment on violent acts at hospitals and the new Postal Savings and Remittances Act allows holders of dormant accounts to start collecting interest income. However, lawmakers are hardly in a position to praise themselves for a job well done when some bills were passed in a rush without appropriate debate on the legislative floor.
For example, the legislature slashed about NT$24.5 billion (US$813.7 million) from the government’s expected annual expenditure of NT$1.9407 trillion as estimated in the annual budget, with the amount of reduction simply based on the average cut over the past few years rather than a careful calculation of costs and benefits.
Also, as a continuation of some of its bad habits in recent years, the legislature has passed the central government’s annual budget for this fiscal year, but has yet to approve the state-owned enterprises’ budget plans for last year. Make no mistake, it is their budget plan for last fiscal year.
What has caused fury among people is that proposed revisions to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法), which were drawn up after a spate of food safety incidents last year, did not even make it onto the legislative floor for discussion.
Although several scandals over adulterated edible oil, rice, bread and other products last year had prompted the Cabinet and lawmakers to come up with as many as 40 proposals to amend the food sanitation act to ensure food safety, different opinions among lawmakers of the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) regarding some proposals and pressure from interest groups have caused the legislature to take no real action. As for the controversial cross-strait service trade agreement and some priority bills that the Cabinet had earlier presented for deliberation — including one about the establishment of representative offices on both sides of Taiwan Strait, one on the free economic pilot zone project and one relating to pension reform — they are unlikely to be reviewed any time soon if lawmakers across party lines remain at odds.
Even though KMT lawmakers enjoy a legislative majority to boycott everything the DPP and other lawmakers tried to push through, the KMT caucus has also become a primary roadblock to executing its party’s own policies. After all, it was KMT lawmakers’ inefficiency, foot-dragging and lack of discipline that allowed opposition lawmakers to have the upper hand in legislative negotiations.
The problems within the KMT caucus mimic what happens among the Presidential Office, the Executive Yuan and the KMT lawmakers, leading to a dearth of coordination and responsibility for people’s lives.
source: Taipei Times
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