The Legislative Yuan should convene and vote again on amendments to the Act Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Power (立法院職權行使法), as the Executive Yuan has found the amendments challenging to enact, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday at the legislature in Taipei.
The Legislative Yuan is to review and decide whether to accept the Cabinet’s motion tomorrow.
The original review of the amendments contravened democratic principles, and the result could not be considered “law” due to the lack of proper discussion at any stage in the process, while unnecessary restrictions prevented those with opposing views from fully expressing their opinions, Cho said.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
Normalizing the president giving a state of the nation address at the legislature and answering lawmakers’ questions is unconstitutional, he said.
The National Assembly, which chose the president before direct elections in 1996, had no power to interrupt the president when they gave a state of the nation address, and the legislature, which inherited most of the National Assembly’s powers after it was frozen in 2005, should not retain powers exceeding those of its predecessor, Cho said.
The powers of inquiry, investigation and summoning witnesses for testimony in the amendments challenge the separation of powers and infringe on the people’s basic rights, he said.
The power of inquiry is given to investigate whether the government is at fault, and is under the jurisdiction of the Control Yuan and the judiciary, while no laws mandate the public’s cooperation with a government institution to fulfill its duties, Cho said.
It is not guaranteed that the legislature’s investigations would benefit the public more than they would infringe on people’s rights, he said.
The amendments touch on the powers of personnel ratification, but fail to set a time frame for deliberation, and overly long ratifications could prevent individuals from assuming office and affect government operations, Cho said.
The acts that would be defined as being “in contempt of the legislature” needed to be clarified, and if left as is, the amendments would only cause political strife to spill over into the judiciary, he said.
Cho said he was not against legislative reform, but such reforms should remain under the framework separating the five branches of the central government.
KMT Legislator Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said that of the 680 people accused of breaching the Social Order Maintenance Act (社會秩序維護法) from 2016 to January 2020, 500 were found to be innocent and victims of government abuse of power.
Failure to amend the Act Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Power is why no member of the public has been asked to stand before the legislature to assist in investigations into government abuse of power, Lo said.
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