Democratic Progressive Party legislators stacked chairs to block Speaker Wang Jin-pyng’s way to the podium, where he would have presided over the review of the bill concerning the organization of the Central Election Commission (CEC).

Opposition lawmakers have rarely tried to directly engage their DPP counterparts, which would have resulted in violent confrontations. Instead, the opposition lawmakers displayed placards reading “I want to have the meeting,” and chanted the same slogan.

The Kuomintang leadership had expressed determination to force through the bill, while the DPP lawmakers had vowed that they would rather die than let pass.

The opposition, despite the KMT leadership’s vow, had failed to garner full support from its lawmakers.

Earlier, some KMT lawmakers openly questioned why the party would want to tackle such a sensitive bill in the last month leading up to the January legislative elections.

Violent scenes stemming from strong confrontations between both sides during the review could dampen their campaigns, the maverick KMT lawmakers have questioned.

The opposition earlier this year had made a futile attempt at revamping the CEC membership. The CEC organization bill was shelved after ruling and opposition lawmakers engaged in a free-for-all.

The KMT renewed its attempt last month amid bickering with the CEC over voting procedures in upcoming referendums to be held along with the legislative elections.

The row over the CEC bill was centered on the opposition’s call to let the lineup of CEC memberships be determined in proportion to a political party’s share of legislative seats.

But KMT Secretary-General Wu Den-yih said yesterday that his party would not insist on a proportional distribution of CEC seats.

He claimed the KMT had suggested many other versions, but the DPP had refused to consider any of them.

Wu said the KMT’s main goal was to implement a law governing CEC membership as soon as possible, to stop it from being controlled by a single party.

KMT vice presidential candidate Vincent Siew also dismissed the idea of proportional CEC membership, saying it would still allow a single party to dominate the election body.

He proposed that only part of the CEC seats be distributed according to political parties’ share of legislative seats.

Tseng Yung-chuan, head of the KMT’s Central Policy Committee, condemned the DPP’s “violence” following yesterday’s boycott.

But he stressed that the incident would not affect the scheduled KMT-DPP negotiations on other bills.

KMT whip Kuo Shu-chun said the opposition side refrained from trying to stop the DPP boycott, because they wanted to show the nation the violent nature of the ruling party.

The DPP claimed that the opposition camp failed to unite over the CEC bill because the KMT and its ally, the People First Party, were arguing over another bill concerning the organization of the Legislature.

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