So here we are after the Lunar New Year festivities and the next legislative session is about to officially start. None of the political parties — ruling and opposition alike — or any civic group or non-governmental organization in the nation could deny that there have been many wrenching changes in the fabric of politics and civil society in Taiwan over the past 12 months.
Since the occupation of the main chamber of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei at about this time last year, the ruling party has been frustrated in its efforts to rush through the passage of cross-strait agreements — negotiated behind closed doors — into law, and the opposition received a major morale boost due to the significant victories it achieved in the nine-in-one local elections in November last year. On top of this, civil society is now subjecting cross-strait exchanges and agreements to increasing levels of scrutiny.
All this notwithstanding, over the Lunar New Year break, when the Sunflower movement responsible for occupying the legislature — accusing it of dereliction of its duty to rein in the excesses of the ruling party — was distracted, prosecutors took more than 100 people who had participated in the protests to court. With all this happening, there has been no indication that the opposition has any intention of introducing any concrete reforms in how the legislature operates.
In response to the indictment of members of the Sunflower movement’s legislative occupation, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) had previously made assurances that until new regulations governing the oversight of cross-strait negotiations had been drafted and passed into law, he “would not convene any party caucus meetings concerning the negotiation of cross-strait agreements,” essentially promising that the cross-strait agreement controversy was effectively on hold for the time being.
However, next year the current crop of legislators are up for election again, including Wang. Not only that, but starting in the second half of this year, the nation will be entering a crucial period in the run-up to elections, and legislators will be preoccupied with this.
Since the way these legislators have performed has forced many young people to take the situation into their own hands and wrest back for themselves the fundamental bottom line of democratic accountability, and that Wang has already promised regulations on legislative oversight for cross-strait agreements, if the political parties want to win over the electorate in next year’s elections it is now incumbent upon their legislators to seize the opportunity in the time remaining of this current legislative session to mitigate their past errors.
This would mean signing the oversight regulations into law — setting out concrete procedures for transparency and powers of oversight that any national assembly within a democratic, constitutional government should have in place.
How else could any of the parties demonstrate their willingness to conform to what the public expects of them in terms of cross-strait policy or legislation?
Considered from the level of constitutional government, the attempted passage in less than a minute of the cross-strait service trade agreement — and the outcry that this caused — revealed the nation’s longstanding shortcomings in legislative oversight for cross-strait agreements. This is something that the ruling and opposition parties share a duty — and the power — to address, and is a major reason for the parlous state of the constitutional system of government currently operated in Taiwan.
The Sunflower movement’s call for constitutional reform was not unfounded. Yes, both the Democratic Progressive Party and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) pledged to amend the Constitution after the nine-in-one elections, but they are in total disarray as to how they should improve the operation of the legislature. If, for example, they wish to hold a referendum on constitutional reform at the same time as the main elections next year, they will need to pass a draft reform proposal within the current legislative session at the very latest.
The question is, in a legislature which has yet to even establish a constitutional reform committee, are they really thinking of presenting a shoddy, rushed, ill-thought-out draft version for the electorate to vote on in a referendum? Where is the legislative oversight that has been spoken of?
Liu Ching-yi is a professor at National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of National Development.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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