A group of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) young turks yesterday publicized its finalized constitutional reform proposal with the goal of establishing "the Third Republic."
Jou Yi-cheng (
Jou, who was formerly director of the DPP's Culture and Information Department, said the public had been suffering from "a civil war of democracy" after the DPP came to office in 2000, and the "war" was a result of a "chaotic central government system" under the Constitution.
amendment
He said that a constitutional amendment passed in 1996 empowered the president to nominate the premier without seeking approval from the legislature, but the amendment had left the premier in a difficult position because he or she is only answerable to the president rather than to the legislature.
The amendment also prevented the president from being answerable to the legislature, he said, adding that the amendment had concentrated the majority of government authority on the president alone.
According to Jou, a constitutional amendment passed in 2005 that halved the current 219 legislative seats was the "driving force" for another amendment.
Forum members hoped their version of the proposal would help constitutional reform become the nation's main agenda this year.
"Many of us are DPP members," he said. "We believe the DPP has an obligation to carry out reform while it remains the governing party."
The forum also proposed that legislators be elected through a German-style "single district, two votes" system, in which voters' ballots for a certain political party determine the ratio of all the legislative seats held by the party.
In the Japanese-style "single district, two votes" system the nation will adopt in this year's legislative election, voters' ballots for a certain party only influence one part of the legislative seats held by the party.
safeguard
Tseng Chien-yuan (
Democratic diversity would also be ensured because such a system would stimulate "virtuous competition" between parties, he said.
"The objective of `the Third Republic' is to break the deadlock of pan-blue and pan-green opposition and allow different opinions from people of different social status and cultural backgrounds to be heard in the system," the proposal said.
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