Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday recommended merging the Cabinet with the Presidential Office, so that the president could answer directly to the legislature.
The nation’s semi-presidential system has blurred the line between the executive power wielded by the president and the premier, and made it difficult to determine accountability, Ma said at a seminar on semi-presidentialism and democracy in Taipei.
An important provision that accompanied the constitutional amendment passed in 1997, which established the current political system, was that the party with the legislative majority should assemble the Cabinet, he said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
However, when he telephoned then-Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) asking the DPP, which had won the legislative majority, to nominate a premier, Tsai told him that the constitutional system no longer left any room for the party to do so, he said.
It is within the president’s purview to formulate major national policies, but they are not legally required to attend Cabinet-level meetings or report to the Legislative Yuan, he said.
As such, the president could easily lose their grasp of public opinion after winning an election, he said.
Ma made two suggestions.
The first is to follow France’s system by having the president preside over Cabinet-level meetings, he said.
However, this system comes with a caveat: The nation requires that the premier report to the legislature, which could make them the president’s scapegoat when unpopular policies are introduced, he said.
The other is making the Executive Yuan subordinate to the Presidential Office, he said.
This might give the appearance that the number of “Yuans” has been reduced to four, but in practice the five branches of government would be maintained, Ma said.
This method would mandate that the president, who would take on the premier’s role, answer to the legislature.
The trade-off would be that legislators could no longer call for a vote of no-confidence against a premier, as the position would not exist, he said.
Responding to a comment that the second system he proposed would allow a president to evade scrutiny if their party dominated the legislature, Ma said that it could weaken, but would not eliminate, opposition parties’ scrutiny of the president.
The president would not be to blame in that scenario, “failed election campaigns” would be, Ma said.
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