Last October, on the eve of the elections, a report analyzing the number and content of interpellations made by then-seated legislators came to light. It added fuel to the campaign fires.

Between July and September of this year, before the opening of the 86th session, three similar reports but with a deeper level of analysis came out, with the winners of last year's elections the focus of critique. Less than twenty days after the third report appeared, just as commentators were discussing why the previous session had the lowest marks ever for legislative performance, and were expressing hopes that the just-convened session would be a "legislation session," a list of 25 top-priority bills made a "timely" appearance.

These various actions from the same source generated a lot of feedback.

"To grade the legislators is nothing new, but the persuasiveness of various media and polling groups' surveys of subjective views of 'which legislator do you like best' or 'which legislator has the best performance' as in the past is not as strong as that of these statistics with an objective basis," says one legislator.

Moreover, "these people giving the grades have a background of specialized preparation. For example, most of those who participated in drawing up the 25 top-priority bills have legal training," says the parliamentary reporter for one paper. "Most important is that they really understand how to handle timing, and always play their cards at the key moment."

The impact has been immediate.

"As soon as our evaluation hit the papers, a lot of people called to get the data," says Sun Chih-hui, who participated in this design. More than a few citizens think that these reports can serve as reference for future voting. Some even say that if the legislative performance is as bad as the 85th session, they will organize a demonstration in front of the Legislative Yuan.

The reactions of some legislators show that they also do not take these assessments-- which name names--lightly. Those who finished high in the number of interpellations expressed satisfaction that their daily diligence at pursuing public policy is finally laid out for the public. Others are busy trying to defend themselves, patiently explaining to reporters why their numbers of interpellations are so low, or so biased in content toward a single side. Of course others disagree, and feel that this type of ranking is irrational.

Who are these people who aren't afraid of antagonizing powers that be? Do they have some political purpose in doing things this way? Many people are curious to find out.

It turns out to be three private organizations: The New Era Foundation, the Institute for National Policy Research, and the Taipei Bar Association.

How did these three organizations come together? What do they hope to achieve?

"Private groups doing legislative oversight are very common in democratic countries. The US has more than 70 such associations. They release evaluations of Congressmen at fixed times to serve as reference for the people," says Lee Shen-yi, chairman of the New Era Foundation. We also need this kind of function. Thus the foundation, which was established with the goal of raising the quality of life, hopes in the political realm to oversee the actual policy performance of legislators, to push the Legislative Yuan to truly be a palace of democracy, and not just a stage for playing games.

Under the guidance of the New Era Foundation, Lee recruited the specialized Taipei Bar Association to join the ranks.

"You could say that lawyers are the people's judges, with the responsibility for promoting justice," says Yeh Jiunn-rong, associate professor of law at National Taiwan University. Lawyers in advanced countries pay close attention to matters of public interest. Lawyers in the past were rather conservative, but the new generation of lawyers have a high sense of independence and strong democratic ideals, and hope they can do something for society. This sense of initiative pushed them into union with New Era.

The Institute for National Policy Research joined up with the same things in mind--to bring together the abilities of scholars and specialists to undertake research and provide the fruits to those in and out of government for reference to do the utmost to promote national development. This center, founded by businessman Chang Jung-fa, has become the financial backer.

With similar goals, the members of this "iron triangle" set to work. With the intention of stimulating the public to work together to oversee the quality of political action, the first shot was to calculate and analyze the volume and contents of legislative interpellations.

Sun Chih-hui, vice-secretary general of NEF, points out that it was difficult to establish a fixed method for assessing the quality of legislators' performance, so they began with the contents of interpellations because "we feel this is where most legislators currently spend the most time."

This self-proclaimed legislative "watchmen" body has already established a system for assessing interpellations. They hope to rely on this to make comparisons between current and past legislators beginning with the analysis of the performance of the last legislative session. The 85th session was the first for the legislators sworn in after the last election, and was a key session in that supplementary legislators were the leading force for the first time. The analysis showed a number of surprising results.

For example: Oral interpellations, with which the public is most familiar and which most often make it into the papers, are not highly assessed in terms of importance or the degree to which they are given attention. For supplementary legislators, oral interpellations only make up 3% of the total, with 97% being written interpellations. And ten percent of written interpellations are about local affairs, showing that some legislators still haven't settled themselves into being "national level" representatives.

Who knows if it's because of the tendency to try to get into the media, but during oral interpellations legislators are fond of sensitive political topics like mainland policy or the structure of ministries. In the written interpellations, financial, economic or social problems are the majority.

As for the orientation in interpellations, Michael Hsiao, director of NEF, notes that 61.97% are limited to the level of "raising issues." Only 27.36% make concrete suggestions. Even fewer go deeply enough to propose revising legislation, only constituting 1.31%.

Does party affiliation affect performance?

National Taiwan University associate professor Yeh Jiunn-jung, looking at the top and bottom ten in terms of number of interpellations, finds that in each group there are five Kuomintang, three Democratic Progressive Party, and two independent legislators distributed quite evenly. Besides this, it seems that newer legislators are more eager to make a name for themselves: six of the top ten are freshmen. In terms of content, new legislators are more inclined to questions of the people's welfare, with more interest in finance economy, society, and the environment than in politics.

NTU professor Wu Chung-chi has compared the content for freshmen and returning legislators. He discovered that in terms of volume, newcomers average 60 interpellations each, higher than the 40 for veteran legislators. But the tendency to have concrete suggestions or actual revisions of bills is stronger for the vets.

"Our approach has already shown results. In the 85th session, the number of written interpellations rose from the usual thousand or so to 4000--that's one piece of evidence," argues Sun Chih-hui.

Nevertheless, a number of legislators believe that the methods used by the NEF are "well-intended but poorly executed." The public may be easily misled, creating the wrong impression that "the more interpellations, the better the legislator."

Legislator Wu Tse says that this method of assessment also subtly misleads the legislators themselves to go and make a large number of written interpellations. "Most of these interpellations are rehashing of old themes, or local matters, and don't necessarily have any direct connection to the people's interests," he explains.

Lee Sheng-feng, who didn't make the top ten, also believes that if you want to evaluate based merely on volume, then the names of those who never or rarely ask questions should be published. "These guys have certainly never devoted themselves to taking part. But as for the other figures, the significance is very limited." DPP legislator Lin Cheng-chieh also suggests, "The only effective assessment is one which can say whose interpellations affect decisions and raise the quality of public policy."

"Returning to my district to serve the people, and going abroad to learn and lobby the US congress, these are my achievements," says one solon. "Or how about coordination between the party and the government--who's to say that's not important? But how can you assess that?"

Further, some legislators sound righteous and stern in oral interpellations, to show their determined attitude toward some given proposal, yet change to another position when it comes to a vote. This severely tests the feasibility of using interpellations as a method for assessing their performance.

"Evaluating the content of legislators' interpellations is primary level work, and has already reached a certain point," states Sun Chih-hui. "Evaluating legislators' performance is no easy task, and our methods will be constantly improved. But what's important is that we have already generated public interest in the issues of whether interpellations are empty, whether the number is too small, or whether there is a bias."

One method to improve things is the call for legislators to establish "voting machines." "This would permit the legislator's position at voting time to come into the open, and would enter a formal record, for comparison with what they say. This way you can tell the real position of a legislator, and whether he is really thinking of the public or whether he has taken the instructions of an interest group," says attorney Lee Shen-yi. They are also working to establish a "Parliamentary Lobbying Law" and a system for public disclosure of the assets of public officials. The purpose of the former is to establish a systematic track for interest groups to lobby legislators, to move toward making such activities visible and legal. The latter is to block the excessive spread of political power derived from wealth.

Beginning with the 86th session, they have taken the next step, which is another item for evaluating the performance of legislators-- overseeing legislators' deliberations of bills.

Sun Chih-hui points out that this is an area of urgency for the Legislative Yuan.

According to statistics announced by the Yuan, in the 85th session which ended in July of this year the Yuan passed only the budget bill, two laws, 16 administrative directives, and two internal rules. This established a new record for the least in history. As the 86th session opened in September, in the face of 144 bills pending before the chamber, calls arose for a "legislation session." But the situation is not especially hopeful. With the session one-fourth over, only one law has been passed--amendments to the company law.

The method to be used will be different from that of assessing interpellations, which takes the legislative record as the basis. The NEF's current method is to be more timely, to send someone to the Yuan daily to collect its news releases. "We will calculate the frequency, contents, and number of comments on legislation, and undertake analysis," says Sun Chih-hui. The results of the research will be announced in stages. The first announcement is expected in December of this year.

Vis-a-vis the problem of the traffic jam in legislation on issues related to public welfare, they also hope to move from passive oversight to active assistance. With the complete participation of the Bar Association, as well as inviting other scholars and specialists for common discussions, 25 top-priority bills were selected.

"We spent a whole evening just discussing the criteria for deciding the order of priority," recalls professor Yeh Jiunn-jung. Their conclusion was to grade each bill on a scale of 100, with 30 points each for raising social welfare and guaranteeing social justice, 20 points for degree of influence, and ten each for impact and accumulated time that the bill has been held up.

"Justice is more important than efficiency," says Wu Chung-chi, who participated in the evaluation. You can't simply use waiting time to establish priority. The reason is that, "The broader the inclusiveness of a bill and the more people it takes care of, the faster it should be deliberated. At the same time, we must earneastly move to help the weak and restrain the strong and urge that the laws which promote social justice be relatively quickly made into law."

Under this principle, 25 laws including the Fair Trade Act (regulating abnormal business practices), amendments to the Senior Parliamentarians Voluntary Retirement Provisions (for parliamentary reform), and the Consumer Protection Law, have stood out. The "Iron Triangle" has used all of its own channels to generate interest and spread the word to other sectors.

"When these bills begin to be deliberated, we will aggregate the views of relevant civic groups and provide them to legislators for reference, to provide direct assistance to the deliberation of bills," explains Sun Chih-hui.

Today, as the agenda of the 86th session hits its high point, it can be foreseen that there will be conflicts. But what's certain is that the "underground legislators" sitting in as watchdogs will attentively record the performance of every legislator.

How long can these activities be kept up? And how great is their effect? Those involved refuse to speculate, and only hope that they can stimulate the interest of the public in the issue of the legislators' performance, and get feedback from their initial efforts. "Only when more and more groups do this can the results of the evaluations be more and more objective and fair," concludes Yeh Jiunn-jung.

[Picture Caption]

In the parliament, legislators direct interpellations at cabinet departments.

(Left) How legislators perform in deliberating bills is not so well known to the public.

In the Legislative Yuan, one can often see the legislators communicating and discussing. The photo shows, from left, Chen Tsang-cheng, Lin Tung, and Chang Hung-hsueh .

New Era Foundation Chairman Lee Shen-yi has established himself as a legislative "watchmen."

"Bills that help the weak or promote social justice should be deliberated first," says professor Wu Chung-chi.

Sun Chih-hui must "report" at the Legislative Yuan every morning to collect the day's press releases for later analysis.

What kind of oral interpellations have legislators made? What kind of written ones? It's all in the Legislative Report.

（Left） How legislators perform in deliberating bills is not so well known to the public.

In the Legislative Yuan, one can often see the legislators communicating and discussing. The photo shows, from left, Chen Tsang-cheng, Lin Tung, and Chang Hung-hsueh .

New Era Foundation Chairman Lee Shen-yi has established himself as a legislative "watchmen.".

"Bills that help the weak or promote social justice should be deliberated first," says professor Wu Chung-chi.

Sun Chih-hui must "report" at the Legislative Yuan every morning to collect the day's press releases for later analysis.

What kind of oral interpellations have legislators made? What kind of written ones? It's all in the Legislative Report.