President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her new administration are soon to deal with critical challenges, both internal and external, caused by the failures of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration. As the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won both the presidential and legislative elections, the party has complete power, and when Tsai’s administration takes office, it must make a push for reform.
In terms of overall national and social development, Taiwan is facing fundamental structural problems that the Ma administration was unable to resolve, instead aggravating the problems. The incoming administration must face the seriousness of these structural issues and propose effective ways of resolving them.
Since Tsai’s Thinking Taiwan Foundation claims to have a large think tank capable of planning major national policies, she must promptly and effectively carry out new policies after taking office. As the new administration implements its policies, it must listen to opinions from all sectors of society, especially from young people and opposition parties.
The main culprit of the difficult political situation that the nation finds itself in lies in the Legislative Yuan. Before taking office, Tsai should take advantage of post-election momentum to reform the legislature systemically.
Prior to the elections, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) proposed reforms to the legislature, although they had ulterior motives.
Having won the legislative majority, the DPP should work with legislators from the other parties to build a new legislature that is truly in line with a constitutional democracy.
In order to push for effective reform, especially legislative reform, the new legislature should use the current momentum to amend the Constitution, to lay a foundation and pave the way for effective policy implementation and reform when the new government takes office. In fact, after the nine-in-one elections in 2014, and after Chu took over as KMT chairman, the two main parties started to push for constitutional amendments, but last year the effort failed because each party insisted on its own views.
However, at the beginning of the talks there was not a total lack of agreement; the two parties did agree on certain issues, such as lowering the voting age, and lowering the electoral threshold for small parties to secure representation in the legislature from 5 percent to 3 percent of the party vote.
That being so — Tsai who also serves as DPP chairperson — could push for constitutional amendments right away. However, these amendments should not involve controversial fundamental issues, such as changing the national title, in order to set the KMT at ease.
Finally, during her election campaign, Tsai repeatedly emphasized the importance of cross-party cooperation. In her victory speech, she made particular mention of the fact that she wants to discuss the establishment of a national affairs mechanism with other parties as soon as she can, in the hope that this mechanism would be used to discuss major national policies and let Taiwan rid itself of vicious political struggle.
Before taking office, she should hold sincere talks with legislators from other parties and ask for their advice on national affairs. Moreover, she should prepare for a national affairs conference after the new administration takes office on May 20, to discuss Taiwan’s political reform with other parties and all sectors of society.
Chiu Hei-yuan is a former research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Sociology.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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