The passing of a legislative amendment that restores Cabinet authority over membership of the National Communications Commission (NCC) is good news indeed.
When the NCC formed early last year it became the focus of a power struggle between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-controlled executive and a legislature dominated by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Perhaps nostalgic for their traditional control over not only most individual media outlets but also the previous media regulator -- the Government Information Office -- the KMT and its allies put a tremendous amount of time and resources into turning the NCC into an offshoot of the legislature, courtesy of regulations that gave parties the right to appoint NCC members based on their legislative numbers.
But then the pan-blue camp ran into a brick wall when the Council of Grand Justices declared the NCC legislation unconstitutional.
Since then, a grace period has allowed the NCC to continue with its work, which -- sadly but predictably -- included politicized decisions on media ownership.
But the grace period finished at the end of this month, and the legislature was forced to act. With the amendment, the executive will nominate NCC members before the list is approved by the legislature -- together with explicit restrictions on political party membership, which is reasonable.
It is hoped that this reversal will discourage the pan-blue camp from using its legislative majority to prey on and manipulate other government agencies, such as the Central Election Commission.
It might be argued -- as the KMT has done -- that Cabinet appointments influence agencies in a way that is unfair and undemocratic. This is strange reasoning, because a government has the responsibility to shape policies and their execution. And the fact that executive agencies are accountable to the legislature for their actions means that out-and-out bias can be placed on the record and dealt with.
The KMT has a good chance of winning the presidential election in March, and with such a victory would come the same privileges and responsibilities -- including accountability -- that the DPP government has had over the last seven-and-a-half years.
Presumably, at that time, the pan-blue camp would cease complaining of executive bias because the executive would be theirs. And, quite possibly, less able minds in the pan-green camp will take up the role of complaining about unfair executive practices.
The answer, surely, is to develop and defend a system of executive duties that is accountable, transparent and secure enough to withstand attacks based on partisan interests and not out of concern for good governance.
This solution relies heavily on the goodwill and mutual respect of people on both sides of the political divide. Such behavior is in short supply for the moment, but once the fuss over the legislative elections dies down, the presidential candidates will have the chance to address what it is that constitutes good governance -- regardless of which party is in power.
And any candidate that makes light of fundamental questions such as these should be very closely questioned on their presidential ambitions.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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