The Nov. 29 nine-in-one elections were followed by a discussion about introducing a true Cabinet system, as if that would be a cure-all, but is it? Sometimes it seems so, but then again, sometimes it does not.
A “Cabinet system” is one comprising a Cabinet formed by the parliamentary majority. If no party receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the party that receives the largest number of votes will form a coalition with other small parties to form a Cabinet in which most members will also be members of parliament.
In the legislatures of many of the European countries that have a Cabinet system, the ruling and opposition parties sit across from each other and in some there is not even a table dividing them. That setup makes it easy to imagine political dialogue. Parliamentary Cabinet systems have abolished royal or imperial rule and only maintain a constitutional monarchy with a figurehead monarch.
France, for example, has rid itself of the monarchy and replaced it with direct presidential elections, but in doing so, adopted a semi-presidential system dividing power between a president and a prime minister. This often creates problems, confusion and conflict when the president and the parliamentary majority disagree.
There are of course many countries with a true parliamentary Cabinet system, such as Germany, while some newly independent countries have adopted a presidential system. There are historical reasons behind both choices and both systems have their particular features, so a look at the democratic history and the level of political culture of each country is needed to be able to say which is doing well.
The Republic of China (ROC) adopted a Constitution with a five-branch system that is neither fish nor fowl. Add to this the unclear and fuzzy authoritarian party-state system under which the president is powerful, but never held accountable, and where the popularly elected legislature has no more bite than a barking dog. In this system, the premier — and in practice often also the ministers — are appointed by the president, turning them into his chief of staff and team respectively, which is preposterous.
The debate about a Cabinet system is the expression of a wish to reform the government’s exercising of power, and of a hope to improve the current system, which concentrates power in the hands of the president, while offering no effective option to restrain exercise of that power. Realizing this hope would involve changing the current electoral system, in which every vote is not equal, although the most urgent task is to adjust the current voting system and adopt mixed-member proportional representation. If the electoral system is not reformed, a true Cabinet system will just be old wine in new bottles, an expedient measure to address current problems that ignores their sources.
Politics is a procedure for implementing civic rights, as well as a cultural expression. The longstanding colonialist ROC party-state is not moving in a positive direction, it is only using “democracy” as a smokescreen in an empty response to social pressure for political reform. If this political system is not changed, the only thing that either a Cabinet or a presidential system will accomplish is highlighting these shortcomings.
If Taiwanese do not first face up to the remnants of the ROC and empty “Chineseness,” political reform will only be a unilateral exercise that serves to delay the process of political healing. Unless the people living in this land who share a vision of a truly normal state write a new constitution and build a new nation together, they will be artificially kept alive, unable to exercise their will, and both the country and its government will forever be struggling for survival.
Lee Min-yung is a poet.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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