The Legislature Yuan achieved a new low on Tuesday, difficult as it may be to believe that it can continue to find new depths to sink to. The usual tussles and shoving matches included two female lawmakers in a hair-pulling and slapping contest. Both women ended up in the legislature's medical center afterward and one was later taken to a hospital for further examination.
While the public appears to have grown inured to chaotic nursery-school scenes on the legislative floor, one cannot help but imagine how frustrating it must be to be a president of a country who has to deal with this delinquent behavior on a weekly basis.
If any inspiration were to be drawn from Tuesday's chaotic replays of the previous week's spats, it would be that the country is in desperate need of a new constitution since the current one no longer provides the framework for a functioning democracy.
When Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ran into strong opposition to his efforts to privatize Japan Post, he decided to dissolve parliament and call new elections. The result was a victory for his Liberal Democratic Party, which now holds a parliamentary majority.
Taiwan's political system is different from that of Japan. The premier does not possesses the authority to initiate a no-confidence vote. Taiwan's system is a semi-presidential one, similar to that of France. So President Chen Shui-bian (
Lawmakers' absurd behavior is all right if the legislature wishes to keep its infamous reputation. But it is disturbing and intolerable that lawmakers seem determined to drag Taiwan's development and national reputation down as well.
There are 12 legislative committees. Dominated by the pan-blues, the committees' sole motivation appears to be an obsession with chipping away at the administration's authority and blocking any of its reform efforts. The worst one in this regard is the Procedure Committee, which on Tuesday rejected the arms-procurement budget for the 30th time, refusing to put it on the legislature's agenda. It also blocked Chen's lists of nominees for the Control Yuan once again.
No matter how much the pan-blue lawmakers try to deny their bias, it is clear that any draft bill or budget proposal that the pan-blue camp is opposed to will never make it out of the Procedure Committee. There is no chance that any of the other committees might have the chance to review the proposals, much less that they get put to a vote on the legislative floor.
There are a number of politicians, both inside and outside the legislature, who are apparently blind to the mass migration of Taiwanese industries to China, to China's military threat, the rising unemployment rate and the plight of people living in flood-prone areas. They cannot see the people because they have their sights locked on the 2008 presidential election.
The complete malfunction on display daily in the legislature has pushed Taiwan's democracy to the edge of a cliff. The lawmakers may enjoy their fistfights, name-calling and food fights, but most people are heartily sick of it all. The emperor Nero has gone down in history as fiddling while Rome burned. Taiwan's legislators will be remembered for their histrionics and sham fights as the nation's economy and future fell to pieces around them.
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,
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