President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) proposed a timetable for the creation of a new constitution during the Democratic Progres-sive Party's (DPP) 15th anniversary celebrations. We should note, however, the muted reaction from opposition parties, the US and China, the media and the DPP's ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union.
Media opinion polls show this is not an urgent matter. But when this plan is implemented, electoral democracy, previously focused on transferring power between political parties, will enter a new realm -- the referendum becomes another democratic channel, and a new constitution becomes the goal for political development.
Talk of a new constitution will have an immediate impact on the content of a referendum law. The opposition has kept the referendum issue a public-policy issue, and the pan-blue alliance has said that referendums should be initiated through public signature drives, thus depriving the executive of the right to initiate a referendum and eliminating consultative referendums.
But the issue of a new constitution affects the public referendum channel. The proposed referendum law (公投法) must leave room for a referendum regarding a new constitution and allow for public participation.
This issue has clearly managed to specify the presidential election agenda since the focus of the election has turned towards symbolic issues such as presidential power, constitutional politics and even the movement to change Taiwan's name.
The unwillingness of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and People First Party (PFP) leaders to respond may be the correct approach in the short term, but continued silence will hurt their presidential image and raise questions as to whether there will be a reaction from the Chinese Communist Party.
In the long term, a new constitution will indeed change the status quo, in particular when it comes to adjusting inequalities in the US-China-Taiwan relationship. Chen's "Five No's" promised self-restraint in exchange for security and stability, but as he is trying to win a second term, it has instead turned into a mistake.
The US keeps reiterating the "Five No's" trying to restrict Chen's behavior, with the opposition and China silently chiming in. The constitutional issue has led to Chen being able to cast off the "Five No's" strait-jacket. Just like the movement to change Taiwan's name, it has demystified independence and made question of including the "state-to-state" model of cross-strait relations in the Constitution irrelevant.
The original direction of Tai-wan's democratization process was not to match the constitutional issue with a referendum. In the past, transformation came through compromise, with frequent meetings on issues of national concern. Government and opposition cooperated to amend the Constitution and this is why we today have an electoral democracy.
The longing for authoritarianism proves that this electoral democracy is incapable of solving fundamental issues. When demo-cracy is diminished to a mere matter of elections, the transfer of government power merely becomes distribution of power between political parties. Public frustrations are transformed into doubts of the democratic system. This is a problem that cannot be addressed by any number of changes in government.
The creation of a new constitution could deteriorate into just another campaign trick. This, together with the orientation of political leaders, will be the biggest motivating power deciding the question of whether the referendum will become a new channel for the democratic participation of the people.
Hsu Yung-ming is an assistant research fellow at the Sun Yat-Sen Institute for Social Sciences and Philosophy of the Academia Sinica.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS