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MAC dismisses speculation about status downgrade

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday dismissed speculation that its administrative status would be downgraded to that of a "Mainland Affairs Office," but officials were unable to spell out the council's role under legislation mandating the restructuring of the Executive Yuan.

"In the future, the MAC will no longer exist as an [individual governmental] entity -- this is the reality. However, it will become a part of the Executive Yuan proper, which will be very large in scale in the future," MAC Chairman and Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Secretary-General Johnnason Liu (劉德勳) said yesterday. Liu referred to the Executive Yuan as a supervisory organ overseeing the work of agencies under its jurisdiction and not as a branch of the government.

In accordance with the Standard Organic Law of Central Government Agencies (中央政府機關組織基準法), the Executive Yuan is to release draft amendments to downsize the Executive Yuan to 13 ministries, four commissions and five independent institutions by the end of this month.

While the MAC is currently a commission under the Executive Yuan's supervision, structural reshuffling is expected to dismantle the council as an entity under the Executive Yuan. In the future, the brunt of the MAC's current responsibilities, primarily cross-strait affairs, will be added to the workload of the Executive Yuan and come under the direct supervision of the premier.

"The Executive Yuan's workload will include accounting, personnel, etc, and Chinese affairs will also be one of its responsibilities," Liu said. "In the future, the MAC will not become just an office at the Executive Yuan. It will still be a part of the Executive Yuan, and we are currently working on an appropriate title to reflect its structural role. This situation is unprecedented."

Liu pointed out, however, that taking on responsibility for cross-strait matters would be a first for the Executive Yuan, as the secretariat primarily handled the Cabinet's internal affairs and supervised civil servants only; the jurisdiction of cross-strait affairs, however, would of necessity reach beyond the scope of Executive Yuan employees.

Liu characterized the Executive Yuan's cross-strait workload as macroscopic planning and coordinating. However, when asked which MAC departments would be retained in the reshuffle, Liu refrained from answering, joking that he was the SEF secretary-general and directing the media to MAC spokesman Chiu Tai-san (邱太三).

However, Liu said that because the MAC will no longer exist as a commission under the Executive Yuan and will therefore be taken out of draft amendments to the Organic Law of the Executive Yuan (行政院組織法) which are due to be sent to the legislature by the end of the month, there is time to mull over possible designations for the entity. Restructuring is not expected to take effect until January 2006 and would depend on the legislature's approval of the amendments.

Liu meanwhile pointed to several legal complications that restructuring could bring for cross-strait affairs. "In the future, with the MAC dismantled, there will no longer be a governmental agency authorized to post representatives to Hong Kong and Macau," Liu said.

Whether the Executive Yuan could legally appoint representatives to Hong Kong and Macau was also an open-ended question. According to Liu, the Executive Yuan "has not said yes, but nor have they said no. It has never happened." He said that there was no applicable legal precedent that can be followed.

In addition, the abolition of the MAC would leave the SEF without a governmental supervisory agency. The SEF is nominally a civic group but executes a substantial amount of the work involved in cross-strait exchange.

"The challenge will be to ensure that the needs of cross-strait work are addressed both structurally and concretely. The Executive Yuan and each individual ministry will need to coordinate to strengthen all mainland-related work. This isn't going to be easy," Liu said.
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