Things have heated up in the past few months, with the four referendums on Saturday and next month’s by-election for the legislative seat in Taichung’s second electoral district drawing attention.
The nation’s political parties have attempted to use the two events to help their own causes.
However, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and some lawmakers have overstepped their roles and functions, either neglecting their duties or even violating the Constitution.
The KMT made a surprise announcement last week to suspend its review of the central government’s budget for the next fiscal year — giving the excuse that “the Executive Yuan has violated administrative neutrality when handling the four referendums.”
By doing so, the KMT has failed to take into consideration the Cabinet’s opposition to the referendums — with the questions on the ballot related to banning imports of pork containing traces of the leanness-enhancing additive ractopamine, relocation of a natural gas terminal project to protect algal reefs off Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音), restarting construction at the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Gongliao District (貢寮) and holding referendums alongside elections — and its duty to defend the government’s policies, while ignoring its role as a reviewer of the government’s budget, insisting on neglecting its duties to delay the implementation of the budget and policies.
Such tricks are reminiscent of the KMT’s brutality during former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) time in office.
As the KMT caucus shows its brutality again by neglecting its duties, will the party’s move come back to haunt it in future elections? Or has it given up on regaining power through proper and legal means, while downgrading itself to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) puppet domestically, with its sole goal to disrupt Taiwan?
KMT Legislator Sandy Yeh (葉毓蘭), a co-convener of the legislature’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, this month invited officials, including Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) and Investigation Bureau Director-General Wang Jyun-li (王俊力), to present a special report to clarify controversy over alleged political prosecutions regarding the four referendums and the by-election.
After prompting a debate between the pan-blue and pan-green camps at the event, she announced that she would adjourn the meeting because she “had a stomachache.”
Yeh was accused of defending the KMT’s stance on the referendums and the Taichung by-election by inviting the officials to give the report.
Was she pressing prosecutors regarding controversy surrounding Yen Kuan-heng (顏寬恒), the KMT’s candidate in Taichung’s second district? Was she treating Taiwanese as if they were three-year-olds?
Many of the officials who were invited to the committee hearing were directly or indirectly related to investigations linked to Yen.
Was it legitimate for the legislative branch to intervene in prosecutorial action? Would such an intervention contravene the Constitution?
As a professor at Central Police University, Yeh must understand these issues.
It is clear how anxious some KMT members are as the winds turned against the party regarding the referendums and the by-election, but it has brought trouble on itself this time.
If the KMT does not seek repentance for its behavior, launching the four referendums groundlessly and inviting officials to report to the legislature unconstitutionally, it will only harm itself.
Roger Wu works in the service industry in New Taipei City.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
A recent piece of international news has drawn surprisingly little attention, yet it deserves far closer scrutiny. German industrial heavyweight Siemens Mobility has reportedly outmaneuvered long-entrenched Chinese competitors in Southeast Asian infrastructure to secure a strategic partnership with Vietnam’s largest private conglomerate, Vingroup. The agreement positions Siemens to participate in the construction of a high-speed rail link between Hanoi and Ha Long Bay. German media were blunt in their assessment: This was not merely a commercial win, but has symbolic significance in “reshaping geopolitical influence.” At first glance, this might look like a routine outcome of corporate bidding. However, placed in
China often describes itself as the natural leader of the global south: a power that respects sovereignty, rejects coercion and offers developing countries an alternative to Western pressure. For years, Venezuela was held up — implicitly and sometimes explicitly — as proof that this model worked. Today, Venezuela is exposing the limits of that claim. Beijing’s response to the latest crisis in Venezuela has been striking not only for its content, but for its tone. Chinese officials have abandoned their usual restrained diplomatic phrasing and adopted language that is unusually direct by Beijing’s standards. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the
RSS