Wed, Feb 14, 2001 page8

• National development requires stable policies

  • By Emile Sheng 盛治仁
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  After dragging on for more than half a year, the controversy over the halt to the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (核四) is now back to square one as the ruling party re-negotiates the issue with the opposition parties. Regardless of whether they were trying to shirk their political responsibilities or sincerely trying to resolve the matter, the Council of Grand Justices' (大法官會議) interpretation No. 520 is worth studying.

  According to the interpretation, "A president is obligated to implement his campaign platform since he or she is elected by voters who support the particular presidential candidate's political views. As a consequence, it is common in politics for a president to wish to reverse a policy with which he or she disagrees, through the good offices of the premier, who is directly appointed by the president."

  Since the ruling party is actually the minority party in the legislature, it is therefore incapable of carrying out its political program. Only if the DPP, perhaps with allies, wins more than half of the seats in the Legislative Yuan at the year-end elections, will the party enjoy unfettered rule and be able to carry out its program without being restrained by the opposition.

  The political party and presidential candidate that win a presidential election certainly have the right to decide the direction of the nation. Otherwise, why bother to have presidential elections or rotation of political parties? Such pronouncements are all very well in theory, but our national development risks being significantly harmed when a major policy is inappropriately changed in haste -- because stable national development is not able to withstand repeated policy changes.

  As he built the American political system, president James Madison, the father of the US Constitution, designed many complementary systems to separate executive powers so that no politician would be able significantly to expand their powers or reverse major policies at will once they were in office -- to avoid the possible influence of populism. These systems included the election of members of the House of Representatives and the Senate in different electoral districts; the separation of legislative and executive powers; the separation of central and local government powers; the independence of the judiciary; regular elections for representatives and senators and restrictions on the length of their terms.

  This separation of power has made it very difficult for a single political party or single politician to reverse national policies at will. Thus, to reverse a major policy, a consensus regarding the policy change must first be reached.

  One major defect in the US system is that it does not easily lend itself to the promotion of reform projects. Former president, Bill Clinton, for example, failed to implement his health care reform project when he first took office, due to lack of support from Congress. Meanwhile, conflicts between the executive and legislative branches usually take place within just such a split govern-ment, a government in which the executive and legislative branches are controlled by different parties.

  The major advantage of the US system, however, is that a policy change, successfully promoted by the government, invariably has the support of the majority of the American people, making it very difficult to reverse it after a rotation of parties, much less to do so repeatedly.

  In fact, the late William Riker, a leading political scholar, believed that the gradual decline of Great Britain's national power was caused precisely by that nation's cabinet system, as the new ruling party always tries to reverse the policies of its predecessor, leading national development to chaos.

  Although the people of Taiwan have enjoyed a rotation of parties only once, such rotations will no doubt become commonplace in the future. I therefore sincerely hope that no matter which party is in power, and no matter how many seats the party occupies in the Legislative Yuan, the ruling party will seriously consider the continuity of national policies and the stable development of the nation as well in order to avoid major policy changes after every rotation. It is to be hoped that the price we have paid this time for power plant controversy will prevent similar cases from happening again.

  Emile Sheng is an assistant professor in the department of political science at Soochow University.

  Translated by Eddy Chang
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