The ruling and opposition parties failed to pass several high profile pieces of legislation on Wednesday, the last day of the current legislative session.
At the heart of the discussions on Wednesday was a proposal to amend the constitution and reduce the voting age from 20 to 18. The measure is supported by the ruling and opposition parties. However, the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) wanted to bundle that measure in a package along with several other issues, not all of which have opposition support.
The other issues included allowing absentee voting and requiring legislative approval for premier appointees. Another issue is enabling smaller parties to secure representation by reducing the threshold for appointing legislator-at-large seats from 5% to 3%.
The opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) wanted to deal with the issues separately. Failure to pass the voting age amendment means that it will not advance to a referendum, which would have been decided along with next year’s presidential elections in January.
DPP Chairwoman and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday said that failure to reduce the voting age had prevented 650,000 young people from having the chance to vote. She said that the KMT needs to take responsibility for bundling the voting age and legislator-at-large legislation with other issues.
“I feel this is really regrettable, and I feel that the KMT’s bundling these two pieces of legislation along with others is bad for the country and it really deprives people of their rights,” said Tsai.
Meanwhile, KMT Chairman Eric Chu said on Wednesday that there was wide public support for absentee voting and for requiring legislative approval for premier appointees. He said his party had tried to allay DPP concerns over absentee voting, by limiting it to within the nation’s borders.
“Unfortunately, because of election-related concerns, the DPP prevented the passage of these two pieces of legislation which had the broadest public support," said Chu. "That prevented a complete discussion or vote on legislation lowering the voting age to 18, and lowering the threshold for political party participation.”