Legislature President Wang Jin-pyng is set to hold negotiations with the ruling and opposition camps on Tuesday to decide whether to extend the current legislative session, which ends on May 31. Another possibility would be to hold a special legislative to discuss a number of pending draft laws.
A policy official with the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), Lin Hung-chih, said Sunday morning that there are a number of issues that his party is still hoping to address. Those include a new mechanism for overseeing cross-strait negotiations, a trade in services agreement with China, a draft bill connected to free economic pilot zones, and a number of measures that involve Cabinet restructuring. Lin said that all of those issues face stiff opposition in the legislature and that there’s not enough time to pass them during the current session.
Lin said a pending flood management budget, on the other hand, faces less opposition and can therefore be put to a review in the current session.
As for the recently nominated members of two of Taiwan’s branches of government – the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan – Lin said that they are scheduled to take office on August 1 and September 1. He said that if a special legislative session is held, there would be enough time for the legislature to pave the way for those appointees to take office on schedule.