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Closed-door
negotiations harming democracy: CCW
By Loa Iok-sin / Staff reporter
Chang Hung-lin, executive
director of Citizen’s Congress Watch, speaks at a press conference at the
legislature in Taipei yesterday, urging the legislature to abolish closed-door
cross-party negotiations.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Citizen’s Congress Watch (CCW) yesterday
criticized an agreement to amend the Accounting Act (會計法) taken through
cross-party negotiations behind closed doors — saying such practices harmed
democracy — as it called on lawmakers to outlaw these practices.
“If only a few people representing each political party’s caucus decide on the
revision of a law, then what do we need the legislature for?” CCW board member
and National Chengchi University sociology professor Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) asked at
a press conference held at the legislature in Taipei. “The legislature could be
demolished and replaced with a small meeting room.”
Ku was referring to the legislature’s surprise adoption of an amendment to the
Accounting Act late on Friday last week which was supposed to exempt research
grants given by the government to professors and elected officials’ special
allowances from being audited, although it was later found to be flawed.
As a result, former independent legislator Yen Ching-piao (顏清標), who has been in
jail since Feb. 19 after he was handed a three-and-a-half-year sentence for
using nearly NT$20 million (US$670,000) of taxpayers’ money to visit nightclubs,
and other councilors facing similar charges will be released when the act takes
effect.
The revision to the Act created an uproar, not only because of its content, but
also because it took only 11 lawmakers — Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng
(王金平), Deputy Speaker Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) and senior lawmakers from the Chinese
Nationalist Party (KMT), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the People
First Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union caucuses — to agree to it in an
inter-caucus negotiation.
Immediately following the passage of the amendment, several DPP lawmakers
protested, saying that they were not consulted and disagreed with the revision.
“Legislation was enacted in 1999 to regulate cross-party negotiations and the
law states that all cross-party negotiations must be recorded on video and a
record published in legislative gazettes,” CCW executive director Chang Hung-lin
(張宏林) said. “We urge the legislature to make public the video of the cross-party
negotiation of the Accounting Act amendment and if there is no such video,
someone must be held responsible.”
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