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Where is the sunshine for Taiwan?

"It is clear that the all-important Political Party Law is in danger of being reduced to a law tailor-made for the KMT. Better call it the `KMT Party Law.'"

Legislators from both the ruling and opposition parties came up with their own versions of "sunshine laws" before the end of the Legislative Yuan's earlier session before the Chinese New Year holiday, riding the waves of James Soong's (宋楚瑜) financial scandal and Lien Chan's (連戰) pledge to put the KMT's assets in trust.

The Executive Yuan worked day and night to the draft the four major sunshine laws: the Political Party Law, the Trust Enterprise Law, the Lobby Law, and the Political Contributions Law.

Cooperation between the two branches of government has been impeccable, with the ruling and opposition parties reaching consensus on passing the four laws within two meetings of the legislature once the pre-election truncated session began last Friday.

However, the bills were crude and haphazard in both content and form -- exactly because of the intense emotions surrounding the March 18 election and the hasty attitudes of those who drafted the bills.

Last Friday, the first day of the new session, the ruling and opposition parties failed to reach consensus on any of the four bills during negotiations. This result had been widely expected. Let's take a look at the Political Party Law, the most important of the four.

Article 21 of Germany's Basic Law endows political parties with a special status in that country's democratic politics. Therefore, German scholars call political parties "semi-constitutional organizations."

In Taiwan, the legal status of political parties does not go as high as the constitutional level. But Taiwan's various laws and regulations do differentiate political parties from other civic organizations. For example, the Public Officials Election and Recall Law (公職人員選罷法) provides political parties with financial support for election campaigns, while the law governing judicial case reviews by Grand Justices requires political parties that violate the Constitution to disband.

Even though they are not given a "semi-constitutional" status, political parties do play a key role in Taiwan's constitutional procedures.

In essence, the Political Party Law is complementary to provisions in the Constitution. The Legislative Yuan, before sending constitutional amendments to the National Assembly for review, must make them public six months in advance so as to give enough time for public debate.

The haphazard attitude of those wanting to pass a law with an almost semi-constitutional status within two legislative meetings is indeed astonishing.

The organization and candidate nomination systems in Taiwan's political parties are messy in the extreme. At one end of the spectrum is the Leninist-like KMT. At the other is the American-style New Party with an open primary system. If the Political Party Law is enacted before any consensus is reached on the organizational structure of political parties, then the law will only have vague, empty generalizations and trivialities -- just like the Executive Yuan-drafted bill.

The only meaningful provision will be the one on whether political parties can run businesses. It is clear that the all-important Political Party Law is in danger of being reduced to a law tailor-made for the KMT. Better call it the "KMT Party Law."

On the technical level, the content of the bill overlaps with many existing laws. The legal terms in the bill are fragmentary, incompatible with legal codes, and obtuse in the eyes of both legal experts and common citizens. Its provisions are obscured by redundancy and could generate conflicts in application -- and endless disputes.

In fact, political contributions and party-run businesses can be regulated by amending the Civic Organization Law or by simply adding provisions into the Political Contributions Law.

Meanwhile, provisions in the Lobby Law can be achieved by amending the Civil Service Law (公務員服務法), Legislators' Conduct Act (立法委員行為法), and the Administrative Procedure Law (行政程序法).

These will achieve the same results without creating conflicts with other laws. If in the future the need arises to enact the four sunshine laws in question, then the legislature will have more time to work on them, with fewer election schemes to consider.

Finally, the ruling and opposition parties tend to use secret negotiations to work out the content of the bills, which are then passed through second and third readings in the legislature. It may be easier for the parties to reach agreements during secret negotiations, but open debates are an important factor in reasonable legislative procedures and they are also a source of legitimacy for any parliamentary decision.

As candidates auction their policies and political parties to vie for achievements to show off during the presidential campaign, no one appears to think about post-election accountability. These four laws will have a decisive impact on Taiwan's future political system. Trying to hurrying them through the legislature amid election hysteria would have been extremely dangerous.

In drafting the four laws, the legislative branch's interest lay in taking credit and looking for a chance to lash out at others, while the executive branch was basically helping out Lien's camp.

The process has turned laws into a tool to curry favor with voters before the election. Once laws become totems that lull the electorate to sleep, their actual content and effectiveness will erode.

Lin Cho-shui is a DPP legislator.
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