The constitutional and political crises highlighted by the recent political upheaval in the nine-in-one elections on Saturday last week could be a turning point for long-overdue constitutional amendments, including those concerning the government institution and legislative electoral system, Taiwan Democracy Watch said yesterday.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) received a drubbing in the elections, which resulted in President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) resignation as KMT chairman and the mass resignation of Premier Jiang Yi-huah’s (江宜樺) Cabinet.
Following the political upheaval, Ma promoted Vice Premier Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) to succeed Jiang as premier, which has “re-exposed Taiwan’s constitutional-political crisis that has existed for a long time and sparked the Sunflower movement or — even earlier — the September strife, a political feud last year between the president and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平),” said National Taiwan University (NTU) law professor Yen Chueh-an (顏厥安), who is also one of the watchdog group’s supervisors.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
“A premier without a mandate being named by a president who has lost public support and trust has officially turned the Cabinet into a caretaker institution and made it even harder to discern who the real decisionmaker is and how the decisionmaking mechanism works,” Yen said.
The institution that grants the president the right to make weighty decisions that are executed by the Executive Yuan, which is accountable to the Legislative Yuan, leads to a “super-president” who has power, but cannot be held accountable in any meaningful way, Yen said.
“The selection of the Cabinet needs no approval from the legislature either, and while the president is of the same party as that holding a legislative majority, the whole executive institution could simply bypass proper procedure and the president — as party chairman — could bend party legislators to his will,” Yen added.
That a premier without a public support base was appointed by a president who no longer has the popular mandate shows that the nation’s democracy has been “temporarily suspended,” Yen said.
Chen Chao-ju (陳昭如), another NTU law professor, said that 2016 — the year of presidential and legislative elections — would be a good time to conduct a referendum to amend the Constitution.
“And if it is to be done, then a ‘defrosting’ of the Constitution — completing procedures that face an extremely high threshold to see amendments — should start now, with participation from civic groups and the public in deliberation of the issues,” Chen said.
“As the Democratic Progressive Party is most likely to be the governing party after the 2016 vote, it should propose the amendments,” said Liu Ching-yi (劉靜怡), another NTU law professor.
She called on political heavyweights, including Ma, Wang, Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義), who is also acting chairman of the KMT, New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taiwan Solidarity Union Chairperson Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝), to seize the opportunity and make the changes with what would be “unprecedented good timing.”
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS