On Tuesday, the Central Election Commission (CEC) decided to combine the presidential and legislative elections next year. This violates the Constitution by depriving small political parties of their right to run for the presidency. It also increases tensions between the two main parties, while not really producing any cost savings.
Recklessly deciding the nation’s mid to long-term power distribution based on ill-considered responses to opinion poll results instead of rational communication and persuasion seriously hurts democracy. As the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) compete for the presidency, these two giant elephants are trampling on small parties, hampering the development of pluralist democracy.
In the previous legislative elections, in January 2008, none of the nation’s small parties passed the 5 percent threshold stipulated in Article 22 of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法). This article stipulates that presidential and vice presidential candidates may register by way of political party nomination. However, to be allowed to nominate a presidential or vice presidential candidate, the party’s candidates must have received at least 5 percent of the vote in the latest legislative or presidential election. By combining the two elections, only the presidential candidates of the two major parties will remain, effectively blocking smaller parties from advancing a candidate.
As a result, a third-party ticket can only be registered based on the regulations in Article 23 of the same act, which requires the signatures of 1.5 percent of the total number of voters in the latest legislative election.
If the presidential and legislative elections are held separately, there would most likely be a two-month period between the elections, using the presidential and legislative elections in 2008 as an example. According to Article 34 of the recall act, public notice for registration of presidential and vice presidential candidates must be issued 50 days before the polling day. That means that small parties that garner 5 percent of the vote in the legislative election are eligible to nominate a presidential and a vice presidential candidate. If small parties pass the threshold in the legislative election, but are deprived of their right to recommend a presidential and a vice presidential candidate because the two elections are combined, they may file a lawsuit to demand a new election, causing greater political and social costs.
Owing to a change in the electoral system four years ago, we now use a single-member district, two ballot system, where the winner takes all. This has forced small parties out of local elections. Although small parties are eligible for -legislator-at-large seats by winning a certain percentage of the second ballot, a party must nominate 10 legislative candidates in order to have their party votes counted. This is outrageous discrimination against small parties.
Looking back at the combined elections, the polarized opposition between the KMT and the DPP will force small parties to chose sides, in effect becoming “political wallflowers,” lest they become further marginalized and lose all support. Our political culture, which used to shine with the colorful political landscape of a rising democracy, will then be forced into the two-party mold. That will only further intensify the blame game between the two big parties.
The main reason for combining the two elections is that it might save NT$500 million (US$17.3 million). That money, however, will be saved at the risk of creating a constitutional crisis by, among other things, extending the “lame duck” period between presidential elections and the transfer of power.
Democracy can not be measured in money. If saving money is the only concern, why don’t we draw lots to decide who will be president? Despite much effort to synchronize the length of the presidential and -legislative terms, we will have to start all over again if the executive branch one day dissolves the legislature under to the additional articles of the Constitution.
What hurts the public most is not really the cost of yet another election. Instead, what the public dislikes the most is elections driven by money, which leads to environmental and political pollution. By combining the elections, the campaign will become even more intense, and pollution and campaign expenditures are both likely to rise.
Expenditure of tens or even hundreds of millions of New Taiwan dollars by far exceed a legislator’s salary during a single term. Once elected, they may profit from corruption or by selling government posts, making secret deals under the table in exchange for political donations from conglomerates or other voter “services” — such as canceling traffic tickets and lobbying for illegal construction.
On the surface, the merger of elections will save taxpayers a small amount of money, but it may in practice cost them much more. If Taiwan really hopes to reduce campaign expenditures, it should learn from the practices common in other countries of legally fixing a strict ceiling for campaign expenditures. That is the way to remove the ultimate cause of the trouble.
Pan Han-shen is spokesman of the Green Party Taiwan.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
In a stark reminder of China’s persistent territorial overreach, Pema Wangjom Thongdok, a woman from Arunachal Pradesh holding an Indian passport, was detained for 18 hours at Shanghai Pudong Airport on Nov. 24 last year. Chinese immigration officials allegedly informed her that her passport was “invalid” because she was “Chinese,” refusing to recognize her Indian citizenship and claiming Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet. Officials had insisted that Thongdok, an Indian-origin UK resident traveling for a conference, was not Indian despite her valid documents. India lodged a strong diplomatic protest, summoning the Chinese charge d’affaires in Delhi and demanding
Immediately after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) “Justice Mission” exercise at the end of last year, a question was posed to Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal regarding recent developments involving the exercises around Taiwan, and how he viewed their impact on regional peace and stability. His answer was somewhat perplexing to me as a curious student of Taiwanese affairs. “India closely follows developments across the Indo-Pacific region,” he said, adding: “We have an abiding interest in peace and stability in the region, in view of our significant trade, economic, people-to-people, and maritime interests. We urge all concerned
In the past 72 hours, US Senators Roger Wicker, Dan Sullivan and Ruben Gallego took to social media to publicly rebuke the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the defense budget. I understand that Taiwan’s head is on the chopping block, and the urgency of its security situation cannot be overstated. However, the comments from Wicker, Sullivan and Gallego suggest they have fallen victim to a sophisticated disinformation campaign orchestrated by an administration in Taipei that treats national security as a partisan weapon. The narrative fed to our allies claims the opposition is slashing the defense budget to kowtow to the Chinese
In a Taipei Times editorial published almost three years ago (“Macron goes off-piste,” April 13, 2023, page 8), French President Emmanuel Macron was criticized for comments he made immediately after meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. Macron had spoken of the need for his country to find a path on Chinese foreign policy no longer aligned with that of the US, saying that continuing to follow the US agenda would sacrifice the EU’s strategic autonomy. At the time, Macron was criticized for gifting Xi a PR coup, and the editorial said that he had been “persuaded to run
RSS