Japanese academic Masahiro Wakabayashi is known for his outstanding research on Taiwanese politics. He defines the nation’s political development since 1949 as the Republic of China’s (ROC) “Taiwanization.” This is a process of political changes through which the traditional Chinese political structure brought by former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to Taiwan has been gradually transformed to match the nation and the population under its actual jurisdiction. However, national leaders are also an important factor in this process.
After Chiang’s son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) ended the Martial Law era, his successor, Lee Teng-hui (李登輝), took over the presidency. The six constitutional amendments that followed during the 1990s brought about Taiwan’s democratization.
The process for the first three amendments was simple, since the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) held more than three-quarters of the seats in the National Assembly. The fourth amendment in 1997 was more problematic: After some KMT members split from the KMT to form the New Party, the KMT lost its qualified majority and had to work together with the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to pass the amendment.
Lee invited the ruling and opposition parties to join a national development conference to build several consensuses. Then-DPP chairman Hsu Hsin-liang (許信良) was in favor of cross-party cooperation, and based on the premise of direct presidential elections, they managed to freeze the provincial government and cancel the legislature’s right to approve the president’s nominee for premier. The result was what Wakabayashi calls a Taiwanese-style semi-presidential system.
Hsu and his aides liked the French-style semi-presidential system, and they even had a nightly secret meeting with Lee to discuss the issue based on their assumption that the DPP might be unable to win a presidential election in the short term, and that a coalition government system would be necessary for them to be able to share power.
The DPP also suffered from an internal struggle, as the Formosa and New Tide factions supported Hsu’s line, while the Welfare State and Justice Alliance factions supported a presidential system based on their nationalist outlook and a wish to keep the promise the party had made in its draft Taiwan constitution.
Conservative forces inside the KMT later united against freezing the provincial government and the cancelation of the five different local elections, such as the township mayor election. In the end, the supporters of a presidential system gave up their bid, because they were of afraid of being blamed for blocking constitutional reform.
Like it or not, Lee and Hsu, the chairmen of the two largest parties at the time, were opinionated about the constitutional system, and their strong leadership was probably a major reason for the completion of the constitutional amendment in 1997.
After two transitions of power, calls for a whole new system or constitution are no longer as popular as in the 1990s. Taking a positive view, Taiwan is accepting the practical “Taiwanization” of the ROC and pushing for piecemeal reform. Taking a negative view, there is a lack of imagination.
Following last year’s Sunflower protests, all parties have a newfound respect for social forces. The calls for constitutional amendments have gradually appeared on the agenda, and political parties must seize this moment and pass legislative proposals that the public can approve through a referendum and push the nation’s democratization and state formation to the next level.
Chen Yi-shen is an associate research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Modern History.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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