Behind the political turmoil following President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) allegations that Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng’s (王金平) had been involved in improper lobbying, there is more cause for concern: A skewed presidential system, heavy on power, light on responsibility and indifferent to the public’s right to know.
First, the president has great power. He can hire and fire the premier — the person who holds the greatest administrative power in the country — as he sees fit, without having to seek the consent of the legislature.
However, the appointment of the heads and members of the Judicial Yuan, the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan — which have only the tiniest administrative authority and access to scant resources — all have to be approved by the legislature. This turns on its head the democratic principle that the possession and execution of power is founded on the consent of the citizenry.
With this skewed system, the president is able, without having to attend public legislative hearings or seek the legislature’s consent, to decide the fates of many administrative heads, through his influence over the premier, dictating the appointment and dismissal of ministers, ambassadors and presidents of state-owned companies. He actually has more power than a president in the US.
Second, there is a lack accountability or responsibility. Once the president wins the election, he can do whatever he pleases for four years, without having to pay the slightest regard to public opinion. Presidents have virtually no need to fear the consequences of their actions within the constitutional system.
For a president to be recalled, a proposal has to be backed by a quarter of the legislators. It can be set in motion with a ballot valid only if two-thirds of the legislators vote in favor of the recall. It is finally decided with a public referendum. As long as the president has 38 legislators in his pocket, recall proceedings will not work.
For a president to be impeached, there needs to be a motion backed by more than half the legislature — valid only if two-thirds vote in favor of the impeachment — before a formal request can be made to the Judicial Yuan to submit the proposal to the Council of Grand Justices for review. Such a high threshold does not exist in other democracies. The president has plenty of opportunities to exert his influence to make sure things go his way.
Finally, the president can ignore public opinion. According to Article 4, clause 3 of the Additional Articles of the Republic of China Constitution, “When the Legislative Yuan convenes each year, it may hear a report on the state of the nation by the president.”
This stipulation refers to one of the official obligations of the legislature, but it does not say that it is a duty the president has to fulfill. Because of this, the president — who possesses and executes the highest national authority — has never delivered a report on the state of the nation to the legislature, the elected representatives of the citizenry.
This is at odds with the democratic principle expressed in Article 15 of the Declaration of of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which states that: “Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.”
Taiwan has already been through the corruption of the government under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and witnessed the fall from grace of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
If this skewed system cannot be righted, the chaos and incompetence will continue from of Ma and those who come after him.
Lin Terng-yaw is a retired professor of law who taught at Tunghai University.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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,
RSS