Even those without legal training know that the constitution is the most fundamental law of a country. Since the start of the legislative session, three legislators from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) coalition — KMT Legislator Wu Tsung-hsien (吳宗憲), KMT Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) and TPP Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) — have prioritized the introduction of several amendments that would expand legislative powers.
The goal of these amendments is to help the opposition manipulate the constitutional system, making it easier to comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s requirements for Taiwan and allow the opposition to smoothly seize administrative resources.
Fortunately, the Cabinet followed the constitutional system and challenged the legislation in the Constitutional Court, allowing the judiciary to make a ruling on these harmful and unconstitutional provisions. The court’s ruling followed the spirit of the Constitution — they determined that most of the amendments were unconstitutional, especially those that would grant lawmakers broader investigative powers because they would lead to a situation where expanded legislative powers would undermine executive authority.
The Cabinet has acted entirely in accordance with the Constitution, yet Weng unexpectedly proposed that the Legislative Yuan need not comply with the court’s ruling. Alarmism like this is detrimental to the constitutional system. Weng and Huang each hold a doctorate in law, while Wu has previously served as a prosecutor. Even with such prestigious legal backgrounds, they are willing to play with the law and ignore the constitutional order merely to obtain political power.
Even though the opposition coalition holds a legislative majority, the results of the presidential election granted executive power to the Democratic Progressive Party. The KMT-TPP coalition hopes to use their majority to prevent President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration from promoting policies beneficial to Taiwan, thereby paralyzing further progress.
However, our constitutional system is not so easily harmed. Legislative powers cannot undermine executive powers, nor can they compromise the Constitution or the nation. Taking that step would inflict irreversible damage from which our country might never recover.
If even our legislators say that we need not comply with the constitutional system, why should the public even bother to follow national law? This ideology would lead to chaos — the true intention of the KMT-TPP coalition.
Chen Chi-nung is a political commentator.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
China’s supreme objective in a war across the Taiwan Strait is to incorporate Taiwan as a province of the People’s Republic. It follows, therefore, that international recognition of Taiwan’s de jure independence is a consummation that China’s leaders devoutly wish to avoid. By the same token, an American strategy to deny China that objective would complicate Beijing’s calculus and deter large-scale hostilities. For decades, China has cautioned “independence means war.” The opposite is also true: “war means independence.” A comprehensive strategy of denial would guarantee an outcome of de jure independence for Taiwan in the event of Chinese invasion or
A recent Taipei Times editorial (“A targeted bilingual policy,” March 12, page 8) questioned how the Ministry of Education can justify spending NT$151 million (US$4.74 million) when the spotlighted achievements are English speech competitions and campus tours. It is a fair question, but it focuses on the wrong issue. The problem is not last year’s outcomes failing to meet the bilingual education vision; the issue is that the ministry has abandoned the program that originally justified such a large expenditure. In the early years of Bilingual 2030, the ministry’s K-12 Administration promoted the Bilingual Instruction in Select Domains Program (部分領域課程雙語教學實施計畫).
Former Fijian prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry spoke at the Yushan Forum in Taipei on Monday, saying that while global conflicts were causing economic strife in the world, Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy (NSP) serves as a stabilizing force in the Indo-Pacific region and offers strategic opportunities for small island nations such as Fiji, as well as support in the fields of public health, education, renewable energy and agricultural technology. Taiwan does not have official diplomatic relations with Fiji, but it is one of the small island nations covered by the NSP. Chaudhry said that Fiji, as a sovereign nation, should support
RSS