As the prosecutors' investigation of the vote-buying scandal in the Kaohsiung City Council unfolds, loopholes discovered in existing laws are inciting much uproar. The most glaring example is, of course, the apparent inability to relieve the implicated council members, speaker and vice speaker from their posts. It is not hard to detect that, facing such problems, both the politicians and general public of Taiwan appear much more interested in quick fixes then long-term structural reforms. That is indeed a worrisome mentality.
After the KMT's blanket proposal to remove the prohibition against recall attempts within the first year of election suffered a still birth, the DPP proposed another version on Thursday.
Under this new and improved version, an exclusionary clause from the one-year immunity period is to be added, so that the implicated council members may be recalled as soon as they are prosecuted and found guilty by the court at the first trial.
Currently, they can hold onto their seats until either one year after their election or they have exhausted all appeals on their guilty verdicts.
The DPP's proposal is indeed much better. For one, it is not unlikely for a court, during the first trial, to reach a verdict within in one year, thus avoiding the situation in which guilty verdicts are entered after the council members in question have completed their terms.
Besides, the existing law already provides that local government officials may be suspended and then removed from their posts after they are found guilty by a court at the first trial, even though they may still appeal their cases. Logic and reason indicate that council members be subjected to the same treatment.
Moreover, an initial guilty verdict is presumably made based on credible and weighty evidence. Under the circumstances, it would be less controversial to remove the council members from duty.
At the very least, the requirement for guilty verdicts avoids situations in which recall efforts may be made out of personal vendetta or groundless allegations, which was the primary purpose of the clause on the one-year grace period.
The loophole-filled Election Recall Law of Taiwan is a textbook example of this point. Years ago, faced with credible threats by voters to recall KMT lawmakers who voted for the legislation on the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant, the KMT abused its legislative majority to quickly increase the number of votes required to recall any official or lawmakers to one-half of total votes in the original voting districts. This makes any efforts to recall lawmakers virtually impossible.
Who would have thought, including the KMT, that years later it would come to place all its hope on the Election Recall Law to salvage its image? Too bad, the law was made ineffective long ago.
The right thing to do is to see the proposal by the DPP as a way to avoid the situation happening again and to give it detailed consideration and thought before enactment, rather than hoping to see instant justice meted out to the implicated council members.
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