In the two months since his election, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) view of party-government relations changed from a separation of party and government to party-assisted government and now to the establishment of a “state policy forum.” The last change attracted more criticism than the first two.
The foundation arranges regular meetings between Ma, his vice president, the legislative speaker, the premier and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman. This is unacceptable, and academics like Shih Chih-yu (石之瑜), a political science professor at National Taiwan University, have characterized the arrangement as a “constitutional mafia.” Ma was quick to say the meetings are “just chats” that do not touch upon national policy.
So five government leaders and the KMT chief make all this effort to hold regular meetings and all they do is just “chat”? What do they chat about? Perhaps they talk about the government budget and the minister of finance’s report.
Ma really loves idle talk, and the more he talks the more he confuses his listeners. Some people call him brilliant, and say chatting is within the clear limits of what is allowed in constitutional government. The problem is that although the boundaries of constitutional government may be clear, nobody is quite sure where to draw the line between national politics, decision-making and chatting.
The key to the difficulty of handling party-government relations lies in the incompatibility of a constitutional government system and a party-state system.
Democratic politics requires a separation of powers to avoid autocracy. At the same time, integration of policy between the various branches of government is required — especially between the executive and legislative branches — or the administration cannot function properly.
Political parties are often an indispensable medium for policy integration, especially in countries with a parliamentary system. Taiwan wants a system with separation of powers like many Western countries, but instead of three branches of government, it has five. However, after dividing executive power between the president and Cabinet, the party system was not adjusted to the role of parties in policy integration. Instead, it maintained the Leninist party system, thus establishing another power center outside the constitutional system.
From this point on, the political party became necessary to policy integration, but not only could the party not play its role as mediator, it became an obstacle to such integration.
Most European countries have put their Cabinet inside parliament, so that parties and the executive and legislative powers operate together. Under the Constitution, Taiwan’s Cabinet is both the highest executive power and accountable to the legislature. It is not possible to unite the three, because the president and Cabinet members are not members of parliament.
However, opting for the next best thing — having parties work together with any constitutional institution to integrate policy — is also not feasible, for the following reasons.
First, if the president is also the party leader, as former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) was for a while, then legislators will be subordinate to the party leader/president within the party. This violates the principle that the president must maintain strict separation between the executive and legislative powers.
Second, if the premier doubles as party leader, then the party leader will be the superior of legislators even though he or she has not been elected by the people. This situation would be even worse.
Third, if the legislative speaker doubles as party leader, then the Cabinet and the president will be mere figureheads.
None of these options is a workable solution. Hence, mainstream opinion among many academics and Ma himself is that there should be separation of party and government, just like in the US.
However, separation of party and government in the US is based on three premises: First, political parties in the US are “weak” parties without party discipline; second, the president leads the Cabinet, as there is no other “highest executive leader;” third, the executive and legislative powers are separated and the Cabinet answers directly to voters, not to Congress. These prerequisites mean it is not necessary, or even possible, for the president to let his or her party lead the government, assist the government or integrate party and government. But Taiwan does not enjoy these three premises.
Because of the conflict between a constitutional system and a party system, relations between government and party kept changing during Chen’s presidential term. But under Ma, they are changing much faster.
Is Ma more amenable than Chen by nature? Or is he less inclined to respect the governmental system?
None of the above: it’s actually the other way around. Chen has always focused on what he wanted, and so it wasn’t important how relations between party and the government changed. Ma is trying to respect both the constitutional and the party systems, except that the two seem impossible to integrate.
In addition, the traditional Leninist system of the KMT is more deeply rooted than that of Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party, so all Ma can do is keep trying.
The problem lies in the mutual conflict between the constitutional system and the party system, making systemic reform necessary. But to change the system, one has to deal with Ma, a conservative who has said that enforcing the Constitution is more important than amending it. If that is the case, we will all have to let him keep trying, and keep changing, but he will not be able to make the two systems compatible regardless of how hard he tries.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY ANNA STIGGELBOUT
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