Taiwan’s system of government is a semi-presidential one. Of the 55 countries with a similar system, Romania, Namibia and Peru are the only ones that have combined their parliamentary and presidential elections. The other 52 countries, including France, hold the elections on separate dates. One has to wonder whether the minority of countries that combine their elections have reached this situation without having given the issue deep thought. In Taiwan’s case, the attempt to combine the elections is certain to encounter several problems that will have to be resolved.
First, the Republic of China Constitution includes the possibility of bringing down the Cabinet in a vote of no confidence. If that happens, the president could dissolve the legislature and call for new legislative elections. Once the legislature had been dissolved, the timing of plans to combine the presidential and legislative elections would fall to pieces. Why, then, should we combine these elections?
Furthermore, the Constitution stipulates that the newly elected legislature must convene on Feb 1. This means that the legislative elections must be held in January at the latest. It also means that the presidential election would have to be moved forward to January, and, consequently, that the president-elect would have to wait for four months before being sworn in.
Unless the incumbent president has been re-elected, the lame-duck period for outgoing presidents would be extended.
Another problem is that presidential elections are governed by the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選罷法), while legislative elections are governed by the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法), and these two laws differ in several places.
These include the rules on campaign advertising, fines on bringing mobile phones into polling stations, regulations -blocking someone who has entered a polling station without voting from re-entering to vote, and the period prior to an election during which opinion polls are prohibited.
These differences could result in confusion over how to apply the law, leaving voters and candidates at a loss as to what to do. In the past, the timing of mayoral and councilor elections for the special municipalities have been changed, but both these kinds of elections are governed by the same law.
Combining the elections would cause the presidential candidates to dominate proceedings, while legislative candidates could appear lackluster in comparison.
This would deprive voters of the opportunity to get to know their legislators because of the focus on the presidential candidates. However, we must not forget the important role given to legislators in our Constitution.
Finally, if the presidential election is moved forward, about 50,000 young people that would have been able to vote for the first time if the traditional election date was kept will be disenfranchised, deprived of their first opportunity to exercise their right to vote.
There is nothing to prevent the two elections being combined, but all complementary measures should first be dealt with. The Constitution should be amended to create a common date for the swearing in of the president and legislators and the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act and the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act should either be merged or revised so that regulations are consistent.
The Ministry of the Interior is offering only an administrative and political solution; the constitutional and legal problems remain. If the issue is to be decided by public opinion poll, it would be populism, pure and simple, to do so without first fully explaining the issues.
Hawang Shiow-duan is a professor at Soochow University’s Department of Political Science.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Forward Forum in Taipei, former Singaporean minister for foreign affairs George Yeo (楊榮文) proposed a “Chinese commonwealth” as a potential framework for political integration between Taiwan and China. Yeo said the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait is unsustainable and that Taiwan should not be “a piece on the chessboard” in a geopolitical game between China and the US. Yeo’s remark is nothing but an ill-intentioned political maneuver that is made by all pro-China politicians in Singapore. Since when does a Southeast Asian nation have the right to stick its nose in where it is not wanted
As China’s economy was meant to drive global economic growth this year, its dramatic slowdown is sounding alarm bells across the world, with economists and experts criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for his unwillingness or inability to respond to the nation’s myriad mounting crises. The Wall Street Journal reported that investors have been calling on Beijing to take bolder steps to boost output — especially by promoting consumer spending — but Xi has deep-rooted philosophical objections to Western-style consumption-driven growth, seeing it as wasteful and at odds with his goal of making China a world-leading industrial and technological powerhouse, and
For Xi Jinping (習近平) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the military conquest of Taiwan is an absolute requirement for the CCP’s much more fantastic ambition: control over our solar system. Controlling Taiwan will allow the CCP to dominate the First Island Chain and to better neutralize the Philippines, decreasing the threat to the most important People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Strategic Support Force (SSF) space base, the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island. Satellite and manned space launches from the Jiuquan and Xichang Satellite Launch Centers regularly pass close to Taiwan, which is also a very serious threat to the PLA,
More Taiwanese semiconductor companies, from chip designers to suppliers of equipment and raw materials, are feeling the pinch due to increasing competition from their Chinese peers, who are betting all their resources on developing mature chipmaking technologies in a push for self-sufficiency, as their access to advanced nodes has been affected by US tech curbs. A lack of chip manufacturing technology such as extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) would ensure that Chinese companies — Huawei Technology Co in particular — lag behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co by five to six years, some analysts have said.
RSS