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EDITORIAL: When parties get off scot-free

Rowdy misbehavior in the legislature has become such a national institution that some might be forgiven for thinking that a peaceful parliament is an idle one.

Indeed, the reputation of the nation's elected representatives is not at all good, and there is a lot of potential for improvement -- but this can be realized only if the legislators are stripped of their sense of entitlement to demean the people that elected them and if they are held to account for their excesses.

The Taiwan Competitiveness Forum, a rather oddly named think tank, came up with a proposal yesterday that will attempt to do just this. The idea is to name and shame legislators that are considered incompetent and then to promote a "boycott" against them in next month's elections.

The think tank not only complains of boorish conduct on the legislative floor and in committee meetings, but also rails against the sinister potential of a downsized legislature.

The professors and others that make up this think tank cited the experiences of a similar campaign in South Korea that killed the electoral hopes of several dozen people.

It is about here that the think tank's proposal collapses, and not just because of its lame slogan "If Korea can, Taiwan can." There is, after all, much in South Korean politics that isn't worth emulating.

The idea that reducing the number of legislators increases their authority is preposterous enough, unless one is referring to the entirely desirable end of having one legislator per geographical district.

It is the think tank's strategy that is genuinely ridiculous. Now that there is -- in almost all cases -- one clear-cut candidate from the pan-blue and pan-green camps, a boycott will simply hand a vote to the political party that a voter does not wish to support.

The think tank is also soliciting suggestions for "incompetent" legislator-at-large candidates, though how these individuals are to be targeted given that the legislative-at-large vote is given to a party and not individual candidates is beyond us.

These well-meaning people say that they are not targeting anyone in particular. But this misses the point entirely.

Legislators are ultimately answerable to their parties, and it is well within the powers of the parties to have the dolts in their ranks stripped of their responsibilities -- and their membership, if necessary -- and any real influence on the legislative floor and in the committee system withdrawn.

So the real question is this: Why are the good professors not targeting the parties and their strategists who cultivate and condone such cynical and embarrassing behavior -- not to mention Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平)?

After seven years of a Democratic Progressive Party government and a hostile legislature controlled by the pan-blue camp, one might have thought the "boycott" concept would be just as odious to ordinary people as some of the legislators they elect.

It is the parties -- all parties -- that continue to nominate the dregs of the political world for safe seats in the legislature courtesy of the legislator-at-large system. If the parties are not held to account first, the efforts of the think tank or anyone else will amount to nothing.

The best suggestion to voters is to act positively -- get out and vote for the best possible candidate, and complain about individual legislators to the party in question -- rather than waste time with ridiculous online surveys that will be rendered meaningless in any case by partisan influences.
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