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Updated Thursday, March 20, 2008 0:00 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Nice to see some party discipline after HQ incident

Last Tuesday night, now-former KMT lawmaker Alex Fai and three other Nationalist lawmakers barged into the DPP presidential candidate Frank Hsieh’s Taipei headquarters. After the DPP responded to the provocation with violence, riot police had to extricate the KMT lawmakers form the site. A squad car was heavily damaged and several people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries. Fai and party’s reason for the ill-advised visit was a claim that Frank Hsieh procured offices in the building, owned by the government-controlled First Bank, without paying rent.

Of course, no amount of provocation justified the violent behavior some of the DPP members exhibited. Most people agree that lawmakers can and should investigate government misdoings, but lawmakers should also bear in mind that they are not the police. As KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou said in a statement following the incident, “It is appropriate that lawmakers should question officials. What went wrong was how they exercised their power.”

Within 48 hours of the fracas, the four KMT members who had acted rashly were suspended from the KMT for one year. In an attempt to make up for the harm done, Alex Fai gave up his KMT membership indefinitely. Ma himself has since offered at least four direct apologies to Hsieh, his supporters and society at large. Ma has also warned that the day of grandstanding legislators is over; warning that those who do not reform will become targets of reform themselves.

It is refreshing to see swift action after an error. For the last 8 years, the public has endured stunts and provocations from some lawmakers who seem to enjoy rabblerousing. Now that many of the offending members have been voted out of office following December’s legislative election, Ma has made it clear that he will not tolerate any shenanigans from his party’s parliamentarians. Hopefully, Taiwan will begin to see a more disciplined, professional and civil discourse in the nation’s chambers of lawmaking.

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