A personnel reshuffle already underway in the Executive Yuan has added to the frenetic speculation about the implications of Tang Fei's (唐飛) resignation for Taiwan's political landscape.
Experts said a vote of no confidence in the new Cabinet seemed an unlikely prospect, because this would give the president the right, under the Constitution, to dismiss the Legislative Yuan, prompting an election which the KMT would be far from guaranteed to win.
Chin Heng-wei (金恆煒), editor in chief of the intellectual magazine Contemporary Monthly (當代雜誌), said that President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had extended his power by appointing the DPP's Chang Chung-hsiung (張俊雄) as premier.
Chin said Taiwan is "heading towards a full presidential system, under which President Chen will become further involved in domestic matters that are supposed to be the preserve of the premier, as indicated in the Constitution."
The Constitution stipulates a division of powers whereby the president is responsible for foreign affairs, cross-strait relations and defense and the premier is responsible for all other affairs of state.
As the new Cabinet looks set to become more DPP-oriented with Cabinet members chosen by the new DPP premier, Chin said the upcoming challenge for the DPP will be "how to clearly distinguish the party from the government."
Chang was the convener at Chen's campaign headquarters during the presidential election. Before being chosen as vice premier in former premier Tang Fei's Cabinet, he was secretary-general of the Presidential Office.
"By transferring Chang from the Presidential Office to the Executive Yuan, the president, in my opinion, has in a sense installed his personal chief housekeeper into the chancellorship [家臣變宰相]," said Lin Duan (林端), an associate professor of sociology at National Taiwan University.
Chin said that because the president and premier had mutual interests, Chang would be likely to respond positively to Chen's views as far as policy-making was concerned. It would be in both sides' interests to prevent differences of opinion between them, he said.
"Chang, like former premier Tang, would curtail his own political prospects by offering his resignation in order to insist on his own judgement," Chin said, "and the president would come under heavy fire for robustly confronting the premier."
The president has been criticized for trying to influence decision-making in the Executive Yuan -- at which the premier presides and in which the president does not sit -- over the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (
Julian Kuo (郭正亮), associate professor of politics at Soochow University (東吳大學), said that President Chen should "confirm his position as the leader of the DPP and understand that he is the only one who can coordinate the party before taking further measures to define the relationship between the DPP and the government."
Chin was not optimistic about the suggested separation of functions between the DPP and the government.
"From my point of view, I don't think that political parties in Taiwan are only influential during elections," he said, arguing that political parties, by their nature, would always want to manipulate the government's operations.
"As far as I'm concerned, the truly serious consequence is that the president may begin to enjoy greater power over policy-making although he cannot be questioned by lawmakers," Lin said.
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