The eighth session of the seventh legislature began a few days ago. It is also the last session of the first legislature elected under the single-district system, halving the number of legislative seats compared with previous legislatures.
Not long ago, the US journal Foreign Policy listed Taiwan’s legislature as one of the world’s most incompetent.
Some blame the legislature’s poor performance on systemic factors, saying the extremely powerful executive branch has weakened the legislative branch, and that the quality of legislators has declined following the introduction of the single district system and the halving of the number of legislative seats. It has also been said that national issues are not given enough attention because of the small number of legislators-at-large.
Foreign Policy wrote that Taiwan’s pan-blue and pan-green camps see each other as enemies, which often leads to brawls on the legislative floor, and that it was difficult to find examples of cooperation.
Indeed, the long-term confrontation between the pan-blue and pan-green camps, which consider only one’s party affiliation and not whether one is right or wrong, makes dialogue and negotiation difficult.
As a result, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) blocks about 1,000 proposals by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) at the legislature’s Procedure Committee in each legislative session.
The DPP, on the other hand, sometimes disregards the KMT’s legislative majority and to this day still resorts to minority violence in the legislature.
To examine the performance of a legislature, we can start by studying its political concerns or its ability to influence policy. Former US House speaker Newt Gingrich believed the US Congress, with its legislative rights and ability to promptly reflect public opinion, should be better able to direct the nation’s future development than the US president.
In the 1994 congressional elections, he led more than 300 Republican US House of Representative hopefuls under the slogan “Contract with America.” They proposed congressional reform and put forward 10 draft bills in the financial, economic, welfare, national defense and judicial areas. In the end, about half of the bills were passed into law, in what has called an outstanding legislative achievement.
Perhaps the pan-blue and pan-green camps can learn from the US. When it comes to problems that need to be resolved urgently, such as national development, social justice and legislative reform issues, Taiwan’s party leaders and the different parties’ legislative candidates should propose a “contract with Taiwan” by proposing a list of well-planned bills and avoid making short-term election promises.
In other words, they should attract votes by proposing complete and excellent policies.
It is only with solid voter support that such policies can be smoothly implemented after the election.
Bernard Chou is an associate professor at National Cheng Kung University’s Graduate Institute of Political Economy. Huang Tzu-che is director of Legislator John Chiang’s office.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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