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.
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