In March and April last year, the Sunflower movement demanded an end to cross-strait negotiations behind closed doors and that a review of the cross-strait service trade agreement only be conducted once a law regulating the oversight of pacts with China has been passed.
Cross-strait economic and cultural exchanges are vibrant, but political views differ greatly. The Chinese Communist Party’s tyranny and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) bumbling incompetence and evasiveness are the core problems. These are the issues that the tens of thousands of people who took part in the Sunflower movement tried to address, and they did manage to create a rare and precious “constitutional moment.” Unfortunately, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) habitual bureaucracy almost ruined it.
After the KMT’s drubbing in last year’s nine-in-one elections, Ma resigned as party chairman. The only candidate for the post, New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), has put constitutional reform issue on the agenda, giving himself a strategic advantage, earning praise from former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and leading Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to propose a joint national affairs conference.
Suddenly, a parliamentary versus presidential system debate came to the fore and the rare constitutional moment seemed to present a real opportunity. Lee’s praise was meant to encourage Chu to take on the responsibility of instigating constitutional reform. As for choosing between a parliamentary or presidential system, Lee’s opinions have become more prudent.
Many key events of the 1990s were matters concerning the Constitution, such as the Wild Lily student movement, the abolishment of the National Assembly, the scrapping of Temporary Provisions Effective During the Communist Rebellion (動員戡亂時期臨時條款), the convening of a national affairs conference and setting a timetable for political and economic reform
Lee promised Wild Lily representatives he would hold the conference, which opened the door to constitutional reform and democratization. The DPP responded to the students’ request by establishing a constitutional research team in 1990. The team came up with a Democratic Constitution (民主大憲章) similar to the French Fifth Republic (France’s constitution), which championed a unicameral parliament, direct presidential elections, centering constitutional power on the president, and maintaining dialogue between the Cabinet and the legislature.
In 1991, the DPP teamed up with organizations and academics to hold a conference on writing a constitution at which a draft constitution advocating a presidential system was passed. It advocated a presidential system because a directly elected president has real power and because a president who is a symbol of the nation can consolidate the public will.
As a member of the preparatory committee for the 1991’s People’s Constitutional Assembly, I kept extensive records of the assembly detailing the hard work and visions DPP members and Taiwanese intellectuals made in drawing up a blueprint for national formation. In 2005, under former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) aegis, the 21st Century Constitutional Reform Alliance (廿一世紀憲改聯盟) also drew up two draft constitutions, one for a Cabinet system and the other for a presidential system.
The current constitutional debate should not only address urgent problems such as all votes not being of equal weight, but also look at the issue from the perspectives of constitutional history and comparative constitutional studies to make use of the experiences and resources of the past 20 years — doing so would achieve more with less work.
Chen Yi-shen is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History.
Translated by Ethan Zhan
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