After a nearly decade-long hiatus, reforms to the nation’s Constitution are back in the spotlight, with a dizzying array of proposals put forward by members of both major political camps and numerous civic organizations.
While diverse in nature, many parts of the discussion have converged on institutional changes to governmental structure to tackle perceived problems in the nation’s semi-presidential system — which is said to be skewed toward the president and unable to hold a president accountable for their actions.
The renewed debate was triggered by New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who suggested that the nation adopt a parliamentary system to address mounting calls for reform following the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) drubbing in the Nov. 29 elections last year.
Chu made the remarks about a month before he assumed the position of KMT chairman.
Although a plethora of proposals have since joined the fray — including an increase in the total number of legislators, electoral reforms to allow smaller parties to flourish and the drafting of a human rights charter — critics say the discussions have skirted what they see as problems inherent in the Constitution in defining relations with China.
“It is like The Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone knows the Sunflower movement did not occur merely out of dissatisfaction with the president’s abuse of power; the movement illustrated acute anxieties about Taiwan’s relations with China,” Academia Sinica researcher Huang Cheng-yi (黃丞儀) said.
Rumblings seeking constitutional reform can be traced back at least to the Sunflower movement’s 23-day occupation of the legislature’s main chamber in March and April last year, when thousands of protesters expressed fury over the proposed cross-strait service trade agreement, accusing President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration of ramming the treaty through without legislative deliberation.
In an article published in the Chinese-language CommonWealth Magazine in April last year, Huang said that the Sunflower movement provided the nation with a rare “constitutional moment” — a period of heightened deliberation about the Constitution and fundamental political reforms in a time of political impasse.
The academic said that the Sunflower movement reflected the Constitution’s inadequacy in coping with increasingly complex economic and cultural ties across the Taiwan Strait, as well as a “legal void” in establishing regulations for the government — especially the president — in interactions with China.
According to the Constitution’s 1991 amendment, China and Taiwan are defined as the “Mainland Area” and “Free Area” of the Republic of China (ROC) until the ROC “reunifies” with China in the future.
Huang told the Taipei Times that the Constitution should clearly define the ROC as a separate entity from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), adding that the nation’s current legal framework often places cross-strait affairs under the jurisdiction of rules or statutes designed to handle domestic affairs — thus risking abuse of power.
The Constitution should lay out detailed provisions to guide relations between the ROC and China and set clear prerequisites or approval mechanisms for potential political treaties, Huang said.
He added that current reforms suggested by politicians failed to answer questions raised by the Sunflower movement, saying that Chu might have focused the debate on governmental structure to circumvent public dissatisfaction on cross-strait issues.
Human rights lawyer Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) — one of the most vocal critics of the Ma administration and the cross-strait service trade agreement — said that a topic as divisive as redefining cross-strait relations would likely not immediately receive the three-quarters support required in the legislature to launch a constitutional amendment.
He said that the issue was of crucial importance, although it required more discussion, adding that civic groups plan to place the issue on the agenda during a series of grassroots forums scheduled across the nation leading up to 2018.
Following the Sunflower movement’s retreat from the Legislative Yuan in April, Lai joined prominent social activists and academics to launch the Civic Alliance to Promote Constitutional Reform, one of two coalitions that are campaigning for increased public involvement in constitutional reforms.
The alliance has since proposed a two-stage process for the reforms, in which certain procedural amendments — such as lowering the voter turnout threshold for referendums — can be ratified through a referendum held alongside the presidential elections set for January next year, while other, more divisive issues can wait until the 2018 local polls.
By law, amendments to the Constitution must be approved by the public through a referendum, which requires prior announcement by six months.
The alliance said that constitutional amendments in the past — a total of seven from 1991 to 2005 — were carried out in a largely “elitist” fashion, whereas the upcoming reforms can set a historical precedent by inviting a large amount of public input.
The group said that although leaders from the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party have brought up reform ideas, neither party has engaged in a comprehensive reconsideration of the Constitution.
After brief statements by party leaders last year, both camps are in the process of holding preliminary discussions on the matter, despite calls from civic groups for the legislature to seek a draft constitutional amendment before the end of May.
“We stand for a complete overhaul to the Constitution,” Lai said, adding that the reforms strive to achieve radically different results from amendments in the past.
“We do not want the amendment to solve only particular problems as they surface, or any kind of fragmented, temporary solution,” he added.
Huang went further, saying that upcoming reforms should act as a form of “constitution-making,” as they would be an “exercise in popular sovereignty” that would express the will of Taiwanese.
Huang added that while many supporters for constitution-making — often more radical proponents of Taiwanese independence — might find fault in the continued use of the ROC Constitution, pursuing reforms through amendments to the main text of the Constitution could still provide a viable path under current political circumstances.
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