In 1947, former British prime minister Winston Churchill mused that “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
He did not doubt democracy: He was noting that, for some, the jury was still out concerning its charms.
Democracy is going through trying times, not only in Taiwan but also in regional neighbors South Korea and Japan. One cannot see the response to the brief “martial law” constitutional chaos in South Korea and the role that ordinary citizens played in it, or the “Bluebird movement” protests against legislative chaos in Taiwan, and say that democracy is completely wanting.
Democracy is not the only system that has been challenged recently by the turbulent international scene: Autocracies such as Syria’s al-Assad regime, which crumbled in 10 days, and China and Russia, whose economies are faltering — in the former because of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) insistence on concentrating power in his own hands, and in the latter because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hubristic military adventurism in Ukraine — bear witness to this.
Anyone who has not noticed the legislative chaos testing the rigor of Taiwan’s relatively young democratic institutions and constitutional procedures simply has not been paying attention. The scenes and news from the Legislative Yuan have been alarming and frustrating, or perhaps exhilarating and liberating, depending on one’s point of view in this very politically divided country.
How do we characterize the various participants: the members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) of the opposition, and those of the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)?
It has not been pretty, nor a source of pride in the nation’s democratic procedures, with the DPP blocking access to the legislative chamber to keep Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT away from the speaker’s podium, or Han resorting to show-of-hands votes on amendments that the governing party had not been given the opportunity to debate — that is, not doing his job properly — or the violent scuffles, with KMT legislators such as Chen Yu-jen (陳玉珍), now accorded the nickname the “Kinmen tank,” wearing a hard hat and showing off her “war wounds” to reporters after the fray.
The electorate deserves better.
Do we put this down to a mere difference of political opinions? Is the KMT exploiting the opposition’s slim legislative majority to settle political scores with the DPP over the transitional justice initiative that has relieved it of its ill-gotten funds?
If the KMT is not trying to hobble the nation’s democracy, it is certainly doing its best to give that impression.
It is hard to believe that KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) would be an exemplar of transparency on the legislative floor, but he was just that when he called the rejection of President William Lai’s (賴清德) Constitutional Court nominees tantamount to “a vote of no-confidence” in Lai and described him as a “lame-duck president.”
It was not, and Lai is not that, but Fu’s descriptions were a revelation, if not of his ultimate goal, then the method by which he hopes to achieve that goal.
The reason the KMT has targeted the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) and the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) first is that it wants to remove any impediments to its nefarious schemes, as well as the means for the electorate to sanction individual lawmakers.
That is, these amendments are only the opening sally of further planned attacks on Taiwan’s democracy, and this chaos is going to continue for some time.
As it does, we will see just how robust Taiwan’s Constitution and democratic institutions are.
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