On Tuesday, party caucuses in the legislature came to a consensus on amending the voting guidelines so they could vote on the nominees for a seat in the Control Yuan.
Then what happened?
More than one-third of the nominees — 11 out of the 29 nominees recommended by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) were rejected by the legislature, in which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) holds a majority.
Even the nomination of incoming Control Yuan president Chang Po-ya (張博雅) was confirmed by merely a single vote.
The pan-blue camp has outnumbered the pan-green camp in the legislature for a substantial time.
On countless occasions in the past, when issues of great controversy have been sent to the legislature for deliberation and handling, the KMT has resorted to using party discipline to force its own legislators to vote the way the party wants, to pass the resolutions and draft bills that are in line with its own interests.
If the opposition parties resort to extreme measures to block issues, in the name of voting via proper procedures so as to bring issues in line with public opinion, they are called “barbaric” and blamed for causing the legislature to fall into idleness, and of opposing issues for the sake of it. The result is that the legislature is viewed as a source of political chaos.
However, if we look at how pan-blue legislators voted in the recent round of voting for the president’s nominees for the Control Yuan, it is easy to see that if party discipline is relaxed, the “representatives of the party will” once again begin to act as representatives of public opinion.
It also shows us how different results can be gained when legislative autonomy is implemented. If we look back at the time before the vote for the Control Yuan nominees, Ma gave the list of nominees strong backing and refused to admit that any of the names were nominated for past favors or that his nominations were inappropriate.
He also organized a deceptive vote at the national party congress to create the illusion that everyone within the party was in total agreement with the nominee list.
However, when we compare this to the dismal results that followed, it becomes clear that the real troublemaker behind the whole controversy over the Control Yuan nominations was not the opposition parties and not even the legislature; it was the man who wields all the power and who shows no regard for how he uses it — Ma.
To be honest, although the result of this display of legislative autonomy was surprising, there were also some nominees that were more than qualified to obtain a seat on the Control Yuan that, shockingly, were shot down as well.
If we dig deeper for the reasons for this we will discover that on the whole, the list of nominees was already infamous and this had a negative affect on the small minority of outstanding nominees who were also on the list.
Now that the Control Yuan nominees controversy is over, we should consider the political issues that have caused huge debates in the legislature in the past.
If the cross-strait service trade agreement or the government’s proposal to establish free economic pilot zones could be handled in the same way as this vote, respecting legislative autonomy and public opinion, there might still be hope of a bright democratic future ahead for Taiwan and Taiwanese politics.
Yu Mei-nu is a Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
Translated by Drew Cameron
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