By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
The legislature’s extra session ended yesterday, with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus coming away the overall winner. However, opposition parties did have the consolation of having their priority bills placed on the top of the agenda for the next session.
In party negotiations yesterday, legislators agreed to prioritize a numbers of bills championed by the Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union caucuses in the next session, including amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), the Act Governing Relations Between the People Of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (兩岸人民關係條例), the Offshore Islands Development Act (離島建設條例) and the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), as well as a proposed law on the promotion of a nuclear-free homeland (非核家園推動法).
The KMT caucus also pledged not to block those proposals in the Legislative Yuan’s Procedure Committee.
The governing party dominated the extra session, which was scheduled to run from Wednesday to today, with a legislative majority, lifting a ban on beef containing the livestock feed additive ractopamine — passage of which will open the way for imports of US beef containing ractopamine residue — and enacting a capital gains tax on securities transactions.
The two items were priority bills for the KMT caucus in the extra session.
The extra session ended one day early, with seven proposed amendments passed yesterday afternoon as the opposition parties appeared dispirited after losing battles on the beef and securities tax bills.
KMT lawmakers looked eager to end the session as well.