Leaders of the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and Green Party Taiwan have asked President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to implement reforms as promised to lower the electoral threshold, saying that small parties are being crowded out of existence.
The thresholds in the upcoming election are too high, TSU Chairman Liu Yi-te (劉一德) said, adding that a party must receive at least 5 percent of ballots to be granted legislator-at-large seats and 3 percent of the party-vote ballots to receive a state subsidy of NT$50 per vote.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) have “reaped millions from the national treasury,” Liu said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The DPP and the KMT have dominated the nation’s political landscape and received state financing and vote subsidies, he said, adding that only in recent years has the rise of the New Power Party (NPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) ended the duopoly.
Meanwhile, smaller parties are being crowded out, and can no longer receive state subsidies, Liu said.
TSU Secretary-General and former legislator Chou Ni-an (周倪安) said that the high threshold has denied smaller parties’ legislator-at-large representation in the Legislative Yuan.
If the situation persists, there would be no checks-and-balance mechanism overseeing Taiwan’s two major parties, and no scrutiny against corruption and influence peddling by legislators and officials, Chou added.
Green Party Secretary-General Wang Yen-han (王彥涵) said that increasingly more people have negative feelings toward the DPP and the KMT, and they should be provided with a chance to vote for other parties.
However, as they are concerned with not exceeding the threshold, many of these “disaffected” voters head toward the TPP or the NPP as the third political force, which has made it even harder for smaller parties to survive, Wang said.
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