Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) yesterday said he supported a constitutional amendment that does not touch upon the nation’s status and a switch from the current semi-presidential system to a parliamentary one.
Constitutional reform has been a long-term goal of the DPP and the issue has resurfaced after recent anti-government protests.
Reform “is necessary to resolve the conflict between the administrative and legislative branches,” Su told reporters.
He recommended seven areas for reform last week, including increasing the number of lawmakers from 113 to between 200 and 300.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has criticized the DPP for being inconsistent, since it backed the slimming down of the Legislative Yuan from 225 seats to 113 during the former DPP administration.
Ma “should not dwell on the past and refuse to plan for the future,” the DPP chairman said yesterday.
Most people support constitutional reform because of the stalemate inside the government “as long as the amendment does not touch on general provisions — such as the first chapter of the Constitution, and disputes over the nation’s name, national flag and territory,” he said.
A switch from a semi-presidential system, which critics said has turned into a “super-presidential system,” to a parliamentary system would be the best way to resolve the political deadlock, Su said.
The basis for suggesting increasing the number of legislative seats is twofold — pure mathematics and enforcement of diverse representation, Su said.
Under the parliamentary system, as many as 50 to 60 lawmakers could become Cabinet members, which impedes efficiency, while increasing the number of lawmakers would promote better representation by bringing in young politicians, smaller political parties and underprivileged groups, he said.
Former DPP chairperson and presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), who is favored to win the party’s chairmanship election on Sunday, said the public’s negative impressions of the presidential system are a result of “the president’s abuse of power and the lack of checks and balances on him.”
However, she said that consensus-building can take a long time and she would not want to conclude which system is better without a comprehensive public discussion.
National Dong Hwa University professor Shih Cheng-feng (施正鋒) criticized the DPP for flip-flopping.
“The DPP favored the presidential system when it was the ruling party and it prefers the parliamentary system when it is in opposition,” Shih said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
RSS