In just two months since he came to office, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has generated continuous and heated debate in relation to the people he has appointed to both the Cabinet and the Examination Yuan and Control Yuan.
True, disputes happen amongst governments all over the world regarding the appointment of officials to office and are unavoidable.
However, a president responsible for appointing people to various positions needs to have a clear and consistent method when doing so.
In addition, clear distinctions between the ruling political party and the government are necessary for a democracy to run smoothly. However, recent developments have been confusing and it is hard to tell just what sort of theory Ma uses for appointing people and how he separates party and government.
Let’s first look at the people Ma has employed for positions within his government. In any democracy, Cabinet appointments must respect the nation’s parliament. During his presidential campaign, Ma pledged to obtain the legislature’s agreement before appointing a premier. This is customary practice in a Cabinet system or a dual-leadership system like France’s. However, Ma broke his promises.
In terms of a presidential system — for example the type used in the US — Cabinet members and many other different types of candidates must all stand before congress and be agreed on via a congressional hearing in order to be passed. Ma however did not follow any similar procedure.
A parliament revolves around its party caucuses. Therefore, respecting a parliament entails respecting the party caucuses.
Although Taiwan’s political system has no regulations granting the legislature the right to approve Cabinet appointments, for policy implementation to run smoothly and for the government’s actions to be in harmony with democratic values, respect should still be shown to the legislature and other political parties.
France, for example, has no written laws saying that decisions must be agreed on by parliament, but still relies heavily on the vote of confidence.
In some nations that use a dual-leadership system, the opinion of the parliamentary speaker on appointments is still sought out of courtesy.
In Taiwan in the past, a certain number of Cabinet members served in the legislature prior to their appointments as a show of respect for the legislature and to promote smooth interaction. Ma is now ignoring these procedures and is calling this “separation of party and government.”
Regardless of what Ma calls it, problems are bound to occur as a result.
The strange thing is that Ma sticks to the principle of separating party and government when making political appointments, but in the area where this principle is most important, the appointment of civil servants, the new government immediately checked their allegiance to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), thus once again making it an issue of party allegiance.
The most preposterous situations appear in the areas of diplomacy and national defense, two areas that Ma says the president should be directly in charge of.
Diplomacy is an area where political affiliation should have the least significance, and diplomats should present a unified image to other nations.
In the past, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) produced many skilled diplomats that were then used by the Chen administration. However, after the second change of government, these officials were blacklisted.
This loss of talented diplomats meant that the new government had to settle on Francisco Ou (歐鴻鍊) as minister of foreign affairs, a person who has not had an outstanding career.
Ou is well known for his loyalty to the KMT. However, his loyalty to Taiwan has been questioned and he caused a scandal over “de-Taiwanization” soon after coming into office.
Merely focusing on the loyalty of Taiwan’s representative to Washington — Taiwan’s most important unofficial ambassador — whilst paying no attention to his reputation and talent may be ludicrous, but it is not the most ludicrous thing.
Nationalization of a military is the most important benchmark of a country’s level of democracy, but the first thing Minister of National Defense Chen Chao-min (陳肇敏) did on taking up his post was to order that troops praise the KMT flag in their military songs and that soldiers should study old KMT military teachings.
These are attempts by the KMT to dominate the military once again. Such privatization of the armed forces is a great step backwards for a democracy.
In terms of the people Ma has appointed to the Examination Yuan and Control Yuan, the separation of party and government has in effect put both the legislature and his own political party on the sidelines. In doing so, Ma has offended and upset the legislature as well as key members of his own party and has unsurprisingly been attacked by both.
Ma completely ignored the legislature in his nomination list for members of the Control Yuan. He gave the list of nominees to the president of the Control Yuan, which he had appointed himself, allowing him to choose who he wanted on his team. This is absolutely ridiculous.
Ma’s intention is clear; he is basically telling Wang Chien-shien that he as president of the Control Yuan can choose who he wants to employ.
By saying that Yuan members must obtain the trust of the Yuan president, Ma is in effect turning the Control Yuan, a quasi-judicial body, into an administrative organization.
By far the most important aspect of a judge’s job is the independent exercise of his authority as well as the ability to make correct, unbiased decisions on his own that are not influenced by the orders or policies of his superiors.
To be able to maintain this independence, heads of judicial institutions do not have any say in who is employed as a judge or who is promoted.
This is the biggest difference between judges and members of an administrative institution.
For example, members of the US Supreme Court are recommended for their positions and pass through review systems before taking on their posts.
There is no way they can be chosen by the Supreme Court chief justice.
Therefore, with Ma allowing Wang to choose his own team of Control Yuan members and judging from what Wang has said since, it appears that members of the Control Yuan will be following the policies of the president of the Control Yuan and will not be able to make independent decisions on cases in the future.
The behavior of Ma and Wang in this regard is absurd and it is extremely hard to believe that their constitutional knowledge is so lacking.
If Ma does not carefully re-think his strategies for appointing officials and the separation of party and government and fails to update his knowledge about our Constitution, he will not only run into problems appointing officials.
The promotion of government policy and the interaction between constitutional organizations will also experience deep trouble in the near future.
Lin Cho-shui is a former Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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