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With less than two days to go before ushering in the New Year, the National Assembly worked until late into the night Thursday in a last-ditch effort to conclude a horde of unfinished business that was long overdue. It is difficult to comprehend why our legislature consistently acts in this fashion, when lawmakers so frequently talk of reform and vow to adopt "new" political standards.
The ruling party is largely responsible for the way in which the 17th National Assembly is seeing out the year. The Uri Party ought to have set its priorities in order and put all matters related to the population's livelihood first. Yet instead, it brought forth contentious bills and spurred large-scale defiance from the public and opposition parties.
Due to the prolonged bipartisan confrontation, moves to settle the government's budget for 2005 were delayed and the ad hoc committee assembled to handle the issue could not convene properly for even a single session. Even the sub-committee geared toward amending the budget bill held what can only be described as a semi-legitimate deliberation in the absence of opposition members.
Meanwhile, the standing committees dealing with four contentious bills, including a proposal to repeal the National Security Law, often encountered rough language and physical scuffles between ruling and opposition lawmakers.
Even so, it is fortunate that the bipartisan leadership managed to pave the way for dealing with the four bills through various stages of compromise. For the National Assembly to become a center of the national administration, the legislature should impress the public by demonstrating that it is an institution which sides with them. The population has demanded that the National Assembly deal with matters involving its livelihood first, and dispose of the four bills later through a process of bipartisan consensus without fail.
The actions taken by some hardline ruling party lawmakers while negotiations were underway between the two parties' leaders ran counter to the public will. They themselves discredited the authority of the National Assembly when they staged a parliamentary sit-in and rallied at the speaker's residence - urging him to submit bills opposed by the Grand National Party in virtue of his office.
The ruling party leadership also showed off their skill at behaving erratically. The administration and ruling party agreed on a bill amending the Security-related Class Action Law, which excludes cases of past corporate accounting malpractice from being subjected to collective lawsuits for two years, and made an announcement to that effect.
But the revision bill was subsequently rejected by ruling party lawmakers at the legislative sub-committee. It is beyond the limits of our understanding what degree of malfunctioning within the ruling party, which is responsible for the nation's administration, led to such a development taking place.
The lawmakers should more closely perceive the needs and desires of their electorate first and comply with them. They should not act at their own discretion merely on the basis of having been elected.
In the process of monitoring legislators, civic organizations, too, should verify whether they comply with, or run counter to, the wishes of the public. If lawmakers succeed in polarizing the population according to their own particular ideologies, the National Assembly can never become a legislature of the people, for the people.
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