Tue, Feb 18, 2025 page8

• We must cherish the right to recall

  • By Mike Chang 張昭仁
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  A South Korean friend told me that if their country had a reasonable recall law, suspended South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol would not have implemented martial law and caused so much social unrest. South Korean voters have no easy way to implement their right of recall.

  Yoon and his People Power Party have accused South Korea’s majority opposition parties of passing pro-North Korean legislation and blocking the executive branch by continuously impeaching various cabinet heads, acting as a “legislative executive” and causing chaos all over, making it impossible for Yoon and his party to operate effectively.

  In Taiwan, the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party’s (TPP) instillment of government chaos is the same as South Korean opposition parties’ attempts to control the executive branch.

  Taiwanese must cherish the recall movement and be their own saviors. If not, the KMT and TPP-led legislative dictatorship would only worsen.

  Taiwan’s model of legislators serving four-year terms is flawed. In the US, presidents serve four year-terms and the 435 members of the US House of Representatives serve two-year terms. US representatives differ from Taiwanese legislators in that every two years, US candidates must run for election. However, as US presidents ostensibly have two years to enact their desired policies, a two-year tenure would be too short, but four years is reasonable.

  Taiwanese and US lawmakers are representatives of public will during election time. Their primary function is to reflect public opinion, so serving for two years is just the right amount of time and shows the latest public sentiment.

  Taiwan’s four-year tenures for legislators are too long. There are also legislators-at-large, who are voted in not by constituencies, but by vote proportion. Such legislative seats are not based on the public will. How could that possibly represent current public opinion?

  Due to of their four-year terms and power to decide the national budget and interpolate, many legislators-at-large view themselves as officials who can cause chaos by tampering with budgets and questioning political targets. The “strong generation” caucus composed of every TPP legislator is certainly not the only example of that.

  When viewed from the perspective of returns on investment, lawmakers are incentivized to run for election, as they can form political family dynasties that thrive off of dark money. Do dark money dynasties reflect public sentiment? Of course not. Such practices poison democracy.

  It is also questionable why votes for some legislators in Taiwan hold more weight than others. How do we respond to actual public sentiment for the majority of Taiwanese when someone who got 20,000 votes has the same weight as the one with 100,000 votes? There are six non-voting representatives in the US Congress who can observe and question, but cannot vote on legislation, and equality among ballots is one consideration for this. Perhaps Kinmen and Matsu in Lienchiang County could serve as a model by providing non-voting representatives.

  It is a flaw to lack a mechanism to recall legislators-at-large. It is absurd that such “representatives of public will” cannot be chosen directly. Without a recall mechanism, there is a real possibility of them mismanaging things or acting maliciously for the entirety of their four-year tenures. How would that represent public will?

  The US Congress also consists of the US Senate, where each state elects two senators whose constituencies can be quite different from one part of a state to another, similar to Taiwan’s former National Assembly, which was abolished in 2005. Senators differ from House representatives in that the latter serve smaller constituencies and districts, and tend to represent the protracted, daily sentiments of voters. Senators serve for six years per term, with one-third of the senate running for election every two years, ensuring accurate representation of public will.

  Taiwanese ought to cherish the right to recall. If that recall movement fails against repugnant legislators, the consequences could be dire. The legislature could fall prey to the lawful selling out of Taiwan, becoming centered on dark money politics and political dynastic families concentrating money and power — is that the future we want?

  Mike Chang is an accountant.

  Translated by Tim Smith
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