Unlike in bicameral legislative systems — such as the US Congress, which has a House of Representatives and Senate; Japan’s National Diet, composed of the House of Representatives and House of Councillors; and the British parliament, with its House of Commons and the House of Lords — the Legislative Yuan is the only supreme body of legislature, and its one and only parliamentary hall should certainly not be housed in a shabby building.
The legislature’s building in Taipei at No. 1 Zhongshan S Road is cramped, and is not the best environment for legislators to have expansive and open mindsets.
The question of where to situate a new legislative complex has become a much-discussed issue, and Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) is taking the first steps in a search for a new location.
Given that the buildings housing county and city governments, public offices, public transit stations, and art and cultural centers are increasingly using ostentatious designs, it is easy to envision the Legislative Yuan housed in a park within a well-designed compound.
What should be a cause for concern is that new legislative buildings would be too good for legislators — like universities that are mocked for their grand buildings while producing no grand academics. The quality and morals of the people inside the buildings should not fail to match the finely designed structures.
Although Taiwanese used to be underrepresented in the legislature (and in the National Assembly, which was dissolved in 2005) before constitutional reform in the 1990s, the more serious problem now is that the single-district, two-vote system does not reflect the value of one person, one vote.
The system of electing 34 legislators-at-large from political parties’ lists, in proportion to the number of votes won by each party that obtains at least 5 percent of the vote, obviously benefits larger parties and stifles smaller ones.
From the perspective of one person, one vote — or basic principles of mathematics — any small party that obtains one-34th of the votes (about 2.94 percent) could justifiably request qualification to participate in the allocation of legislator-at-large quotas.
Then there is the problem of the effectiveness of overseeing the government. In the era of single-party rule, when availability of information was limited, legislators faced no electoral pressure, and no obligation to serve voters.
The legislators elected after the fallacy of the “10,000 legislature” never had the numerical strength to obtain a majority, and often resorted to physical and violent behavior to highlight the absurdity of the authoritarian monolith of the party-state system. Most observers agree that this behavior was a necessary evil tied to an extraordinary period in time.
Nowadays, what legislators compete over is not delivering piercing and powerful speeches during question-and-answer sessions, but being the first to report at the beginning of a session.
On top of that, legislators continue to rely on theatrics when they question officials — grabbing microphones, monopolizing the podium, fighting in groups, throwing tea and water at each other, and generally behaving like clowns.
If voters want to fill the legislature with political parties and politicians who cannot keep up with the times — leaders who behave irrationally — then a “Legislative Yuan Park” might as well be established at Taipei Zoo.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor at National Hsinchu University of Education.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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