Are electoral promises meaningful?

The first televised debate in preparation for the March 22 presidential election, in which the public will have an opportunity to ask questions to the candidates, will take place on Sunday.

A few days ago, the main organizers -- several newspapers and TV stations -- unveiled the list of the 20 participants who have been selected to ask questions of the candidates. The categories are wide ranging, from the cross-strait issue and foreign affairs to birth rates and the gambling industry. It is clear that the public has high expectations for the policy implementation of the next president.

The main organizers of the debate said that not many questions will deal with national defense, foreign affairs or cross-strait issues, as most people seem to be concerned with living standards and the economy. We can therefore hope that the two candidates will use this platform to propose concrete and comprehensive policies on matters that clearly are of concern to Taiwanese.

In the mind of the public, the president should possess wide ranging capabilities and have an opinion on and a policy for every issue.

There is a concern, however: Regardless of how many concrete promises the two candidates make in the televised debate, the question is, what are the chances that these policy promises really will be implemented? An even more serious issue is the question of whether the candidates should be making promises in the first place.

Under the constitutional system, the Cabinet is the nation's highest executive institution. This raises the question of whether it is in line with the spirit of the Constitution for presidential candidates to make all kinds of policy promises and whether the future premier is bound to implement the promises made by the president during an election campaign.

Looking at political realities, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds less than one-quarter of all seats in the legislature and the party's presidential candidate, Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), has clearly stated he will be a "passive president" who "delegates executive power."

If Hsieh were to win the presidential election, then how could he -- if he really is to be a passive president who delegates executive power -- implement all the promises he made during the election campaign? Or will he simply blame the legislature for being a "source of chaos," or claim that promises made during the election campaign do not necessarily have to be implemented?

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), on the other hand, has stressed on more than one occasion that he will respect the semi-presidential constitutional system. One can only hope that he is clear on how much executive power he would be able to wield if he were to be a president that respects the Constitution.

The most preposterous aspect of the constitutional system is, in fact, the huge discrepancy between the public's expectations and understanding of the role of the president and the actual limitations that are imposed on the president by the Constitution.

The election campaign should be an opportunity to educate the public on these issues. But the media, the political elite and even the presidential candidates have acted in a way that increases the discrepancies between fact and perception.

In this context, some people have begun to wonder if now might not be the appropriate time to move from a semi-presidential to a clear-cut Cabinet system.