The first session of the 11th Legislative Yuan’s four-year term ended on Tuesday, and 55 bills were passed in the session, which is the fewest bills passed in one session in 12 years.
However, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) said the session delivered a “very good result,” despite there being fights and arguments in this break-in session for many newly elected legislators.
In the last two days of the session, lawmakers rushed to pass a slew of resolutions and bills, mainly proposed by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators, who have a combined majority in the legislature.
However, some of the resolutions and bills they hurriedly passed were controversial, including a resolution to remove a ban on group travel to China, and another requiring the president to give a state of the nation address at the legislature and answer questions from legislators.
The controversial amendments opposition legislators pushed through the legislature in May to the Act Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Power (立法院職權行使法) and the Criminal Code greatly expanded lawmakers’ investigative power.
The amendments sparked strong objections from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, leading to physical confrontations and bringing tens of thousands of people onto the streets in protest.
It also prompted three government entities and the DPP to file petitions to the Constitutional Court seeking a judgement on the constitutionality of the amendments.
The Constitutional Court on Friday issued an injunction halting the enforcement of most of the articles in the amendments, including the one which requires the president to respond to lawmakers’ questions after delivering a state of the nation address.
The KMT caucus said the ruling confirmed “the death of judicial independence” and the court justices were “enforcers” of the DPP, and were so “greedy for power and position” that they were willing to abandon their dignity, adding that it was a “major constitutional crisis.”
The public cannot expect the justices to rule impartially on the amendments’ constitutionality, it said.
The KMT also said that, as the largest party in the legislature, it would continue to participate in the constitutional interpretation process to protect the “last hope” for the survival of the Republic of China’s rule of law and democracy.
The TPP caucus members said they were angry about the “unacceptable” injunction, adding that the court’s position was predetermined and it would have to face “the examination of public opinion and the historical judgement of democracy.”
The injunction ruling and the KMT and TPP responses encapsulate the first legislative session, showing the two parties’ pomposity and disrespect for the rule of law.
In the injunction hearing, KMT and TPP representatives said the court should not even have accepted the appeal, and their amendments are to fulfill the principles of popular sovereignty, responsible politics and the rule of law.
However, their actions to expand lawmakers’ investigative powers and override the rights of citizens, government officials and the elected head of state show that they have confused their self-professed principles with “majority rule,” believing that they are the sole representatives of the public and are superior to all others, including the law.
It was arrogant how they drafted the amendments covertly, and some party legislators, who were forced to vote uniformly with the caucuses’ decisions, looked clueless. TPP Legislator Chen Gau-tzu (陳昭姿) last month said she had to suppress the urge to vote against a KMT-proposed bill and follow her caucus.
The two parties’ attitude is the source of the constitutional crisis they claim to be trying to prevent.
After more than a year of review, the National Security Bureau on Monday said it has completed a sweeping declassification of political archives from the Martial Law period, transferring the full collection to the National Archives Administration under the National Development Council. The move marks another significant step in Taiwan’s long journey toward transitional justice. The newly opened files span the architecture of authoritarian control: internal security and loyalty investigations, intelligence and counterintelligence operations, exit and entry controls, overseas surveillance of Taiwan independence activists, and case materials related to sedition and rebellion charges. For academics of Taiwan’s White Terror era —
On Feb. 7, the New York Times ran a column by Nicholas Kristof (“What if the valedictorians were America’s cool kids?”) that blindly and lavishly praised education in Taiwan and in Asia more broadly. We are used to this kind of Orientalist admiration for what is, at the end of the day, paradoxically very Anglo-centered. They could have praised Europeans for valuing education, too, but one rarely sees an American praising Europe, right? It immediately made me think of something I have observed. If Taiwanese education looks so wonderful through the eyes of the archetypal expat, gazing from an ivory tower, how
China has apparently emerged as one of the clearest and most predictable beneficiaries of US President Donald Trump’s “America First” and “Make America Great Again” approach. Many countries are scrambling to defend their interests and reputation regarding an increasingly unpredictable and self-seeking US. There is a growing consensus among foreign policy pundits that the world has already entered the beginning of the end of Pax Americana, the US-led international order. Consequently, a number of countries are reversing their foreign policy preferences. The result has been an accelerating turn toward China as an alternative economic partner, with Beijing hosting Western leaders, albeit
After 37 US lawmakers wrote to express concern over legislators’ stalling of critical budgets, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) pledged to make the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget a top priority for legislative review. On Tuesday, it was finally listed on the legislator’s plenary agenda for Friday next week. The special defense budget was proposed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration in November last year to enhance the nation’s defense capabilities against external threats from China. However, the legislature, dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), repeatedly blocked its review. The
RSS