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One Year On: Politics - DPP wrestles with authority

By Stephanie Low
STAFF REPORTER
Sunday, May 20, 2001, Page 15

The past year's intransigent Legislative Yuan in action. After achieving the presidency, the Chen administration discovered how difficult it was to rule without a majority in the legislature. FILE PHOTO

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.

Meanwhile, a bill intended to establish an anti-corruption administration (廉政署) under the Ministry of Justice has also been put aside, mainly because the KMT prefers the agency be set up under the judicially toothless Control Yuan, ostensibly to prevent "improper political interference" in anti-corruption investigations.

Independent legislator Eugene Jao (趙永清), who is supportive of the reforms, said the KMT tends to politicize these issues and oppose these bills out of partisan considerations.

"The KMT thinks that all these bills are aimed at it," Jao said.

In some other cases, the KMT has opposed DPP-proposed bills simply because it does not want the DPP to gain credit for popular measures, Jao added.

One recent example has been the stalling of proposed amendments to the Commercial Port Law (商港法), which is designed to enable a merger between Kaohsiung Harbor and Kaohsiung City -- the accomplishment of which was one of Chen's campaign promises.

In yet another example, the legislature amended the Labor Standards Law (勞動基準法) in June 2000 to shorten the maximum working time to 84 hours per fortnight from 48 hours per week.

The revision was pushed through by the KMT in what was an attempt to outshine the DPP's original plan to shorten the workweek to 44 hours -- another campaign promise of Chen's.

Liao said this case was the most obvious example of the KMT's unjustified antagonism against the DPP, because the KMT was betraying its long-standing party line that sided with business interests, rather than workers.

"The KMT, after losing power and becoming an opposition party, should stick to its own line to show its differences with the ruling party," Liao said. "A struggle not guided by a clear policy line only is only aimed at opposition for its own sake."

But the DPP has also been at fault, analysts say, both by failing to communicate with the opposition parties to win their endorsement for many of the bills or tell the public about the importance of the bills thereby creating popular pressure to make things happen.

Wu Tung-yeh (吳東野), a professor of political science from National Chengchi University, said the DPP should have offered the public a clear outline of its priority policies to get wider public support.

"What is needed most is to have all the political parties sit down to think about in what direction the nation should be steered; currently it seems to be drifting, with everyone waiting for the year-end legislative elections to come," Wu said.
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