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Consensus elusive on legislative reform

"The current electoral system creates space for minority groups to compete, and should allow good people to participate in politics -- although sometimes it doesn't seem that any do."

Huang Chang-ling, director of the Awakening Foundation

With it now appearing certain that a Constitutional amendment on legislative downsizing will not be passed before the current legislative session ends on June 11, both the ruling and opposition caucuses have said that they plan to call for an extra legislative session next month to debate and pass the bill.

The downsizing bill would cut the number of legislative seats from the current 225 to 113 in 2008, and would also extend legislators' terms from three years to four.

The bill would also adopt a new electoral system -- known as the "single-member district and two-vote system (單一選區兩票制)" -- to replace the existing "multi-member district, single-vote system."

The bill came close to passing on March 19, one day before the presidential election. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was attempting to push the bill through when all parties were under election pressure.

However, the alliance of independent lawmakers backed out at last minute and demanded inter-party negotiations on the bill. The bill has been in negotiations since that time.

The bill will be discussed in a special sitting in mid-July if, as appears likely, any of the caucuses formally demands that the session be held.

The Fourth Nuclear Power Plant Referendum Initiative Association (核四公投促進會), led by former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (林義雄), conducted a fast in March in an effort to help push the bill through.

Lin, together with Academia Sinica President Lee Yuan-tseh (李遠哲), also sponsored a petition on legislative downsizing that garnered signatures from opinion leaders in various walks of life. The petition was intended to pressure the legislature on the bill.

All these efforts proved insufficient to push the bill through before the election.

But the association has not given up. It kicked off a walking tour around the nation yesterday to raise public awareness on legislative downsizing and to pressure the legislature to go ahead with downsizing as soon as possible.

"Before the presidential election the legislators all promised to push through the downsizing bill, but after the election they had thousands of excuses," association executive general Iap Phok-bun (葉博文) said at a press conference held to publicize the walking tour.

"The amendment bill has been dealt with perfunctorily and has not made any progress. It has gotten lost in the vicious struggles among the political parties," Iap said.

The association also declared that if the legislature held an extra sitting in July, Lin and other association members would return to the legislature to monitor whether the legislators were following through on their promises. Iap also said that if the legislators did not pass the bill, they would conduct a sit-in to protest the failure.

"Pass legislative downsizing first -- the part about the new electoral system can wait," Iap said.

Not everyone agrees with Iap's point of view.

The Legislative Reform Alliance (改造國會行動聯盟), consisting of several social groups and led by National Chengchi University politics professor Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華), believes the focus on downsizing is incorrect.

Instead, the alliance has demanded that the plan for the two-vote system go ahead first -- and that legislators-at-large hold the same number of seats as regional legislators so that more legislators do not have to make regional interests their sole priority but instead can consider bills with the whole nation's interests in mind.

The proposed new electoral system is exactly what the caucuses differ on at the moment. Neither the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) nor the alliance of independent lawmakers supports introducing single-member districts.

The TSU has said that single-member districts would eliminate small parties -- and would, in particular, mean the death of TSU.

But it's not only small parties that worry about their voices being silenced with an implementation of single-member districts -- women's groups and minority groups share similar concerns.

"It's clear that with the implementation of single-member districts, the DPP is looking to direct the country toward two-party politics. But we have seen that the US and the UK, both of which have single-member districts, are falling behind on some advanced issues compared to countries on the European continent," said Huang Chang-ling (黃長玲), director of the women's group Awakening Foundation and an associate professor of political science at National Taiwan University.

"For example, the participation rate of women in politics in the US and the UK is lower than that in Taiwan," Huang said.

"The current electoral system creates space for minority groups to compete, and should allow good people to participate in politics -- although sometimes it doesn't seem that any do. But still, it is important that minority groups are given space to compete in elections," Huang said.

The DPP's New Tide faction has its own ideas about the focus of the legislative reform -- although, in contrast to the women groups, it has proposed single-member districts as the solution to ongoing chaos in the legislature.

"Lin Yu-hsiung and Lee Yuan-tseh did the wrong thing when they encouraged public focus on legislative downsizing," New Tide faction Legislator Lee Wen-chung (李文忠) said.

"I am not opposed to halving the seats, but if we do not change the electoral system and the legislative system along with downsizing, then we are as good as doing nothing. Downsizing itself won't eliminate the chaos in the legislature," Lee said.

"If we adopt single-member districts, then candidates will have to seek the support of the majority of voters, just as candidates do in elections for city mayors and county commissioners," Lee Wen-chung said.

"This can prevent candidates from manipulating tensions between groups. Candidates would be forced to promote issues that are popular with a majority of people," Lee Wen-chung said.
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