The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) yesterday criticized President William Lai’s (賴清德) speech on the constitutional system, calling it full of double standards and contradictions.
In Hsinchu City yesterday, Lai focused on the constitutional system in the third of his 10 lectures on national unity.
The KMT caucus said Lai was wrong in saying that Taiwanese did not have a hand in creating the Republic of China (ROC) Constitution, as 18 representatives from the then-Taiwan Province participated in the process.
Photo: CNA
“Does the president lack the ability to search with Google? Or is he deliberately lying to fabricate the claim that the ROC had not substantially ruled Taiwan before 1949?” it said, adding that it is a serious issue that Lai should respond to.
Lai said that legislative reform bills passed last year by the opposition-controlled legislature were unconstitutional, and that amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) and the Police Personnel Management Act (警察人員人事條例), as well as reviews of the government’s general budget, were not in line with societal expectations.
“Were these not what you [Lai] and the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] had long advocated?” the KMT caucus said.
The amendments are to increase government oversight, and reinforce local governments’ and people’s rights and autonomy, to prevent the DPP from using the Executive Yuan to control people, exploit local governments and monopolize power, so of course Lai opposes them, it said.
Lai said that the “Bluebird movement” and civic groups that initiated recall campaigns against KMT lawmakers were self-driven by citizens, but some recall campaign leaders have been reported meeting often with Lai, it said.
The president has been setting a double standard, deceiving people, inciting conflict, and purging and monitoring people since he took office, the KMT caucus said, adding that his speech highlighted his hypocrisy and arrogance.
Taiwanese do not need this kind of government, nor does it want the DPP to waste government resources on a malicious recall campaign to sabotage the constitutional system and democratic values, it said, urging people to vote against the recalls on July 26 to teach Lai and the DPP a lesson.
Separately, the TPP said that Lai’s speech was a “dictator’s” failed lesson on “constitutional democracy.”
At the core of constitutional democracy is government oversight, and checks and balances, not administrative dominance or presidential autocracy, the TPP said.
Lai has unilaterally misinterpreted the constitutional system, because he wants to stay in office forever without oversight, it said.
The DPP had long advocated for abolishing the Control Yuan, but regrettably, Lai is now embracing the Five-Power Constitution, it said.
The president blocked legislative reform bills and protected his government allies through the Constitutional Court, it said, adding that people can see Lai has discarded the constitutional democracy, supervision, and checks and balances that the DPP had previously regarded as sacrosanct.
On Lai quoting Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jane Addams in saying that “the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy,” the TPP said the president’s arbitrary actions and authoritarian tendencies are “the real lesion on Taiwan’s democracy.”
Additional reporting by Lin Che-yuan
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