Anyone who felt hopeful in recent weeks that for once the Legislative Yuan would get its act together by passing some highly important bills before the presidential election -- most notably the political donations bill and the bill to reduce the number of seats in the Legislative Yuan by half -- was utterly disappointed last week.
With the breakdown of negotiations between the legislative caucuses, it isn't good enough for the pan-blue and pan-green caucuses to distract people's attention by focusing on which side is standing in the way of reform.
Originally the caucuses had agreed that on March 12 the legislature would review and pass some long-overdue bills, with the political donations bill at the top of the list. But when the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucuses demanded that a bill to reduce the number of seats in the legislature be reviewed that day as well -- a proposal which the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party (PFP) rejected -- negotiations broke down.
Anyone who has been following the presidential campaign knows that passing bills on political donations and on reducing the number of seats in the legislature has become an important issue in the campaign, and that both presidential candidates have given their support to the bills.
With respect to reducing legislative seats, this initiative was a plank in the campaign platform of almost all the parties in the last legislative election. Opinion poll after opinion poll has shown that passing such a bill is supported by an overwhelming majority of the public.
It isn't hard to understand why people support the bill -- just look at the pathetic performance of the Legislative Yuan, where lawmakers resort to physical violence against each other and verbal violence not only against each other but also against government officials at interpellation sessions.
The inability -- or refusal -- of the legislature to pass important bills year after year shows that in addition to being a rude body, it is also an incompetent one.
In response to the Legislative Yuan's inaction on the bill to cut the number of seats in the legislature, former DPP chairman Lin I-hsiung (
Under the circumstances, it is surprising that the KMT and PFP legislative caucuses have refused to include the bill on the reduction of legislative seats among the bills to be reviewed and passed before the presidential election. This refusal reinforces the impression that the KMT-PFP alliance is standing in the way of much-needed reforms -- which cannot be good for Lien's presidential campaign.
No less important is the bill on political donations. The ongoing controversy surrounding former Tuntex Group chairman Chen Yu-hao's (
If the pan-blue camp thinks that passage of the bill would only score points for Chen, it is wrong. Passing the bill would in fact burnish the reform credentials of each candidate.
It is sincerely hoped that in the coming week, the Legislative Yuan will resume negotiations and pass these two much-needed bills.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS