Partisan Fighting Derails Budget Talks

TaiwanPlus News

A two-hour meeting on this year's government budget devolved into shouting and name-calling as partisan tensions flared.

Transcript

00:00We are talking about budget now.

00:02Why haven't you shut up for so long?

00:04Shut up!

00:05Shouting and name-calling in the legislature

00:08as partisan grievances flare.

00:10Lawmakers have almost 3,300 budgetary items

00:14to clear for the year ahead,

00:16from military spending to the budget on media,

00:19including Taiwan Plus.

00:20And they've yet to get on the same page

00:22about even one of them.

00:24When they reconvene later Thursday,

00:26the temperature is unlikely to come down.

00:29Controversial recent bills affecting things

00:31like the Constitutional Court

00:33have the ruling Democratic Progressive Party

00:35and the chief opposition party,

00:37the Kuomintang, at each other's throats.

00:39Both sides are now threatening each other

00:41with a nuclear option,

00:43a mass nationwide recall campaign.

00:46They hope to wipe out the opponent's caucus.

00:49These threats helped derail Wednesday's attempt

00:51at budget talks.

00:52I want the Kuomintang to be wiped out.

00:55All these traitors.

00:57I'm sorry.

00:58What's your budget?

01:00But this wasn't the only loss of cool

01:02during the meeting.

01:03You're talking nonsense.

01:04I'm listening to a stupid man talking nonsense.

01:07And Taiwan's third party,

01:09the Taiwan People's Party,

01:10is angry at the DPP, too.

01:13It's incensed at what it sees

01:15as the politically-motivated corruption charges

01:17against its founder, Ke Wen-je.

01:20Now it's also angry at accusations

01:23its proposed 3 percent military budget cut

01:26was motivated by sympathy for China.

01:29The party says the military budget

01:31has gone down steadily

01:32under the rule of both the other parties.

01:48There was some substantive discussion.

01:51On the defense budget,

01:52there was debate about how much to spend

01:54on Taiwan's domestic submarine program.

01:57But here, too,

01:58disagreement about the facts,

02:00in this case,

02:01how much the defense minister had asked for,

02:03brought talks to a halt.

02:25With no progress,

02:26Speaker Han Kuo-yu called a recess until Thursday.

02:30But the fraught political atmosphere

02:32isn't going away.

02:34And it could be some time

02:35before lawmakers can cool down enough

02:37to start making a dent

02:38in the significant amount of work ahead of them.

02:41Joseph Wu and John Ventriest for Taiwan Plus.

Category

Transcript

Recommended