One Year On: Politics - DPP wrestles with authority

Much has been made of Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) assumption of power a year ago as the first democratic transfer of power in Taiwan's history. But the power that was transferred was, in fact, extremely limited, as events in the last 12 months have shown.

The problem for Chen's government has been the minority status of the DPP in the legislature. As a result much of the government's priority legislation has been shelved by the opposition, especially bills aiming to make good on Chen's campaign promises, or the DPP's targeted measures against the "black gold" corrupt political practices widely practiced by the KMT.

"The DPP has failed to come to terms with the structural situation after the presidential election -- its weakness as the ruling party is that it barely controls one third of the legislative seats," said Liao Da-chi (廖達琪), a professor of political science at National Sun Yat-sen University.

Liao said this weakness was exacerbated by the party's lack of experience in coordinating with opposition parties, especially the majority KMT.

But the KMT, after monopolizing power for half a century, is also unused to its new role.

"The KMT still isn't clear about what role to play and what steps to take as an opposition party. Most of the time, it is trying to take advantage of its majority status to engage in political arm-wrestling [with the DPP]," Liao said.

Currently some 200 pieces of legislation submitted by the Executive Yuan await review in the legislature. Some of these draft laws may never move to a legislative committee for review and debate -- at least while the legislature has its present composition -- because the KMT keeps the bills off the legislative agenda by blocking them in the Procedure Committee, citing the "controversial" nature of these bills.

"Controversial" is KMT-speak for "not in our interests," which can be interpreted as anything that relates to cleaning up Taiwan's scandalously corrupt grassroots politics, or implementing any popular promise made by Chen in his presidential campaign.

For example, among the draft laws that have been stalled are proposed amendments to the Public Officials Election and Recall Law (公職人員選舉罷免法) and the Law on Local Government Systems (地方制度法), which the DPP considers essential for reforms against "black-gold" politics.

The proposed amendments to the Law on Local Government Systems are intended to abolish elections at township and county municipality levels starting in 2002, a move which would likely remove most of the grassroots political resources currently enjoyed by the KMT.

In March, the KMT thwarted an urgent DPP attempt to amend the Public Officials Elections and Recall Law to attack the problem of vote-buying in primary ballots held by political parties, on the grounds that the amendment would be unlikely to be completed in time to affect the DPP primaries on April 1. The amendment, if passed, would have threatened only the KMT, which held its primary on May 5.

Another set of proposed amendments to the same law, which would block those individuals who are under investigation for or convicted of crimes which carry a possible penalty of incarceration for 10 years or more or death as well as those with gangster or criminal backgrounds from serving as public representatives, has also been put on hold.