Mon, May 30, 2011 page3

• FEATURE: TDW issues grim assessment of nation’s democracy

  • By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff Reporter
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  Looking at the state of Taiwan’s democracy on the third year anniversary of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) inauguration, analysts say that the nation’s democratic system faces great challenges during the final year of his term.

  Taiwan Democracy Watch (TDW), an organization dedicated to monitoring democracy under the Ma administration, recently issued a grim assessment of the state of democracy in the country, based on the 10 most important events that took place during Ma’s third year in office.

  This was TDW’s second assessment of Taiwan’s democracy since the organization was formed in late 2008.

  Among this year’s top 10 events, four concerned environmental issues, with the now-suspended Kuokuang Petrochemical project at the nation’s second-largest wetland in Changhua County topping the list.

  In second place was a land expropriation plan to make way for the expansion of a science park in the Dapu Borough (大埔) farming village. In this case, the Miaoli County Government used coercive measures to counter farmers who opposed the park, including dispatching excavators onto a tract of land and destroyed rice paddies.

  A series of protests eventually forced the government to sit down with the farmers to discuss a possible compromise. However, not long after that, a 72-year-old female farmer, whose rice paddies had been fenced off for several months, killed herself by consuming pesticide.

  The TDW said that the fourth-most important development was the government going against court orders to halt projects that would see farmland used for science park expansions in Houli (后里), Greater Taichung, and in Siangsihliao (相思寮), Changhua County.

  This marked the first time in the nation’s history that a court cast doubt on the thoroughness of an environmental impact assessment.

  Ranked in fifth place in the TDW’s assessment was the anti--nuclear issue. This included several issues, such as the government’s plan to turn a trail famous for its biological diversity into a road connecting Pingtung and Taitung counties, which activists believed was mainly designed to transport nuclear waste to Orchid Island (蘭嶼); a plan to relax rules on site selection for nuclear waste disposal; and the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in Gongliao District (貢寮), New Taipei City (新北市), which is currently under construction, following the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan.

  “Underlying the environmental issues is a problem of social injustice” said Yen Chueh-an (顏厥安), a professor of law at National Taiwan University.

  The phenomenon was a reflection of a society where social resources were not reasonably allocated and where advantaged people hold more sway in politics, which facilitates public policies that benefit only the advantaged and undermine the rights of the lower strata of society, Yen said.

  Yen said social injustice could become the biggest crisis facing the nation’s democracy.

  “It seems the democratic system operates in a way that doesn’t respond to problems of injustice and where there is no social awareness and mobilization to get the government’s attention,” Yen said.

  The TDW’s selection process for the top 10 events included three stages.

  A total of 170 academics, activists and attorneys, as well as long-time observers and participants in public policy, were invited to select the top 10 events from a pool of 60 that occurred between May 1 last year and April 31. This process was subject to a final review by the TDW selection panel.

  Over the past year, we saw “a vibrant civil society” playing its role in the continuing struggle for full democracy, with more people participating in almost every field, said Chen Shang-chih (陳尚志), an associate professor of politics at National Chung Cheng University.

  “However, the government remained stagnant in that regard. It did not offer concrete solutions nor take action to remedy problems people believed needed to be addressed. What we saw was that [Ma] repeatedly apologized and did nothing to aid reform,” Chen said.

  Especially in the fields of media, the judiciary and referendums — three important elements for a quality democracy — the government was found to have stood in the way of development rather than simply being inactive in pushing for reform, he said.

  The lack of fairness in the judicial system in three particular cases was the No. 3 event on the list.

  The cases were a decision by the Council of Grand Justices to reject a petition to interpret whether the death penalty was in violation of two UN covenants on human rights; an extraordinary appeal — the first in the nation’s history — by the Military Supreme Court Prosecutors Office on what the Control Yuan had determined was the wrongful execution 14 years ago of Chiang Kuo-ching (江國慶), a military conscript, in a rape-murder case; and a decision by the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling by the Taiwan High Court that found the defendants in the Hsichih Trio murder case not guilty, in defiance of the presumption of innocence.

  Ninth on the list was a controversial Supreme Court ruling that overrode lower court rulings on a defendant in a sexual assault case on the grounds that prosecutors had failed to prove that the act was carried out against the will of a three-year old girl.

  The ruling prompted the rise of the “White Rose Movement,” which called for judicial reform and has forced the legislature to propose a bill to dismiss incompetent judges who currently enjoy lifetime tenure.

  Chen said a failed judicial system, the weak role of the media and the denial of the statutory right to referendum meant that “-democracy lacked horizontal accountability” and these were the reasons why the Ma administration, which dominates the executive yuan, had failed to make concrete advances in governance.

  Two events often cited by international organizations, including US-based Freedom House, as the reasons for a decline in press freedom in Taiwan also made the list.

  In sixth place were the disputes and a political struggle at the Public Television System, including controversy stemming from a government-proposed amendment to the Public Television Act (公共電視法), in which media critics said “party interests take precedence over public interests.”

  In seventh place on the TDW’s list was the growing opposition to the rampant use of government-funded embedded marketing, which gained prominence after the resignation of a veteran journalist. This forced the legislature to introduce rules to regulate government advertorials in the media.

  Disputes on whether the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) unconstitutionally restricts free speech and assembly was listed as the eighth most important event of the year.

  The Taipei District Court suspended the hearing of a case involving National Taiwan University assistant professor Lee Ming-tsung (李明璁) in a protest against a police crackdown during a visit by Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) in 2008, and referred the act to the Council of Grand Justices for interpretation of its constitutionality.

  Following the case, the court also held off on ruling in another case in which Taiwan Association for Human Rights chairman Lin Chia-fan (林佳範) was charged with organizing demonstrations without a permit, which is prohibited under the act.

  In 10th place was the failure by opposition parties to hold a referendum on the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement. In all, four separate bids for a referendum on the pact were voted down by the government’s Referendum Review Committee.

  Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強), convener of the Cross-Strait Agreement Watch Alliance, urged the legislature to enact a law to allow for effective legislative supervision of cross-strait negotiations and for a workable mechanism for people to initiate referendums on cross-strait deals.

  “The law has to be enacted by early next year. If Ma is re-elected, he might well enter into political talks with China and conclude political deals, especially before Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) hands over power [to Xi Jinping (習近平) in November next year,]” he said.

  If the flaws in our democratic system, which rendered legislative participation in cross-strait negotiations unlikely and the people’s ratification of cross-strait accords impossible, are not addressed, “people won’t be able to monitor the government in a democratic manner,” Lai said.
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