President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is to hold a High-Level Policy Coordination Meeting every Monday, inviting top officials from the Presidential Office, the Cabinet, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the DPP legislative caucus and the party’s local government heads to discuss policy direction and synchronize the administrative team.
This meeting is the highest-level core decisionmaking mechanism at the moment. However, the question is if this kind of top-down mechanism with a strong suggestion of “democratic centralism” will be able to function as a conduit for party-government relations. This is an issue that will inevitably become a focal point for public debate.
In democratic centralism, a party’s policies should be fully discussed internally before it comes to a decision. Once the decision is made, party members should display absolute obedience to their leadership to boost party unity and no objections will be allowed. The question is whether this model will turn the legislature into the president’s rubber stamp and violate its role as a monitor of the executive branch.
It is common knowledge that politicians and political parties usually make all kinds of promises during election campaigns. Parties are the dominant force in the operations of the lawmaking body, and without parties, the legislative process would descend into chaos and the legislature would be unable to fulfill its mission and functions in a representative democracy.
Party politics are centered on the party-government relationship, which focus on legislation, while the legislative process is at the heart of party-government relations, as the efficiency of the process is symbolic of whether relations are smooth. For that reason, Tsai has attempted to remove any obstacles, and bolster or reform channels to consolidate legislative unity and synchronize the administrative team’s pace and shoulder practical political responsibility. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
However, Tsai’s policy proposals made during her presidential campaign were based on white papers written by academics and experts at her invitation. Nevertheless, it seems as if the lines of reasoning in the white papers have not been exposed to a process of argumentation and debate regarding their necessity and feasibility. At most they seem to be either predictions of the trends of political and economic developments, or simply goals that she hopes to achieve. Turning such proposals into policy and enshrining them in law requires a legislative process that bestows democratic legitimacy. In the practical legislative process, the more the ruling party’s legislative caucus is able to dominate the process, the slimmer the chance that policy will be sufficiently debated, or that opinions from all sides will be heard.
The DPP obtained absolute rule because many swing voters turned to the party due to their disappointment with the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) poor leadership and delayed reform. The legislature is a symbol of the sovereignty of the people and the best venue for “consociational democracy” — a stable democratic system in divided societies characterized by grand coalition, cultural autonomy, proportionality and minority veto. This is why the High-Level Policy Coordination Meeting should focus on public opinions collected by the DPP caucus. Moreover, the party caucus should push for debates among legislators and a public hearing system to accurately reflect the will of the public.
Lo Chuan-hsien is an adjunct professor of law at Central Police University and a former director-general of the Legislative Yuan’s Legislative Bureau.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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