President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said many times that he intends to retreat to the “second line” in terms of government operations. Since he assumed office on May 20, Taiwan has been confronted with sharp oil price hikes, flooding in central and southern Taiwan, legal violations in the government’s stimulus plan to increase public demand, as well as suspicions that some Cabinet members have US green cards.
In terms of oil price hikes, the premier said Ma had only listened to one minute’s worth of reports and was completely unfamiliar with the extent of the increases. When the public asked why Ma did not travel to central and southern Taiwan to inspect flood damage, a Presidential Office spokesperson said the president, out of respect for the constitutional system, refrained from doing what he believes was the premier’s duty.
I fear that Ma and the Presidential Office may seriously misunderstand the president’s role under our Constitution. Taiwan’s constitutional system is neither a presidential system — where the president is the highest executive leader — nor a parliamentary system — where the president has more status than real power. Our system has both a president with real power and a premier who is the nation’s highest-level executive, which is closer to a semi-presidential or dual head of state system.
In a semi-presidential system, the division of responsibilities between the president and the premier is always difficult to determine. In France, the model for Taiwan’s 1997 constitutional reform, it is the president who makes the decisions. Although French presidents have redefined these roles, there tends to be a high degree of overlap between their respective fields of authority. In other words, much of the responsibilities of the president and the premier coincide. Typically, in France presidents have defined foreign relations and national defense as the core territory of their authority, while they also organize the general direction of national policy. These interpretations were generally adopted by Taiwan after the 1997 constitutional amendments.
Can we then state that executive powers, asides from foreign relations and national defense, are solely the responsibility of the Cabinet rather than the president? The answer, both in France and in Taiwan, is no.
During the cohabitation of French president Francois Mitterrand and premier Jacques Chirac, Mitterrand refused to sign privatization acts on the pretext that they could threaten national independence. After the 921 Earthquake, then-president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) immediately visited the disaster area and directed the formulation of an emergency response draft plan. During the SARS crisis, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) chaired many of the crisis response meetings.
A democratically elected president, entrusted with the operations of a nation by its citizenry, ought to be cautious, yet attentive in fulfilling his or her duties. In the daily functions of the state, the president is the arbitrator and supervisor of the implementation of civic rights.
The only French president to allocate power to others as broadly as Ma has done — to the point of listening to only one minute’s report on an important issue — was Georges Pompidou and his premier, Pierre Messmer. The main reason for their roles was not Pompidou’s “respect for the constitutional government system,” but the fact that he was battling cancer.
Ma’s understanding of his role as president has reduced the post to that of a mere chief of certain official duties. Hopefully his misinterpretation of his position is the result of misunderstanding rather than opinion.
Hsu Yu-wei is a doctoral candidate in juristic science at the University of Paris, Sorbonne-Pantheon.
TRANSLATED BY ANGELA HONG
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