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The DPP's Constitution task force will be dissolved

The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) nine-member "new constitution task force" will soon be dissolved, following President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) announcement that the reform project will be carried out by a committee that will fall under the Presidential Office, the head of the task force said yesterday.

Lee Hung-hsi (李鴻禧), convener of the task force and one of Chen's top advisers, yesterday said Chen had made it clear in his inauguration speech that the reforms should be handled by a Constitutional Reform Committee, as described in the existing Constitution.

The aim of the DPP task force, established in October last year after Chen announced plans in August to push for a new constitution, was to formulate the contents of the new constitution, as well as the procedures needed to engineer a new constitution.

It collected opinions across party lines, as well as suggestions from the public.

Lee, a constitutional expert who has been campaigning for Taiwan to draft a new constitution instead of amending the existing Republic of China Constitution, said the task force serves as a consulting body to the DPP and should be dissolved if the president has decided to adopt the existing constitutional amendment procedures.

In his inauguration speech on Thursday, Chen said that the first phase of the constitutional reform project should follow the stipulations of the existing Constitution and its amendments.

In the second phase, Chen said, a referendum should be held to give the public the final say about the constitutional revision.

Lee yesterday declined to comment on the shift in the DPP's stance from drafting a new constitution to amending the current one, only saying that Chen had to compromise due to international pressure to downplay any shift toward independence.

He said the members of the task force were still discussing the feasibility of Chen's two-phase constitutional re-engineering project.

The decision whether to amend or rewrite the Constitution "should respect opinions from below," Lee said.

Meanwhile, some DPP lawmakers have raised questions about Chen's constitutional project.

DPP Legislator Julian Kuo (郭正亮) said yesterday that it would be an extremely difficult task for Chen to amend the Constitution based on the existing regulations, which require the approval of three-quarters of the members of the legislature.

According to the existing rules, a constitutional amendment should be passed by the Legislature with a minimum of 75 percent approval from lawmakers, who must then elect an ad hoc National Assembly to adopt the constitutional reform proposals.

Kuo said this will pose a difficult challenge to the DPP administration, as the opposition parties will control at least one-quarter of the Legislature, even if the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party perform very poorly in the year-end legislative elections.

If Chen wants to form a Constitutional Reform Committee under the Presidential Office, it might undermine the role of the Legislative Constitutional Amendment Committee, the existing legal body to propose constitutional amendments, Kuo said.

"If the Constitutional Reform Committee, comprising experts and academics from all parties and social classes, is expected to do the job, what is left for the Legislative Constitutional Amendment Committee to do?" he said.

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