The results of the legislative elections on Jan. 12 showed a major discrepancy between the number of seats and the percentages of votes for the different parties. Such discrepancies are not uncommon in "winner take all" single seat district systems, such as in the UK.
While the single-seat district system increases the accountability of the legislators to the local electorate, it also opens the door to "little kingdoms" in which a legislator virtually has absolute power, and can perpetuate his or her hold on the position through money and connections.
The single-seat system also contains a flaw in the principle of democracy, since the people in a district whose candidate was not elected may feel that their views are not represented in the legislature.
In the 2005 restructuring, the negotiators adopted a mixed system, in which 73 of the 113 seats were district seats, six for Aboriginal groups and 34 seats were elected through an overall proportional distribution of party votes from a second ballot.
As we have seen from the results of the elections, this has not solved the problem and indeed illustrates the flaws in the new system even more clearly.
Should it seek to fine-tune its electoral system, Taiwan may want to look at the Dutch system, which is a proportional system, but with a twist.
In the Netherlands, the political parties first develop a list of candidates -- through an internal democratic system that represents a mixture of US party caucuses and primaries.
The list is headed by a prominent party member, but -- and this is essential -- also has candidates who represent the different parts of the country.
In that way, if the particular party has done its homework, the party list represents a balance from the different regions and even factions within the party.
On voting day, the voters generally mark the box of the person who heads the list and the seats are allocated on the basis of the total percentage of the vote the party receives.
In that way, there is no discrepancy between the percentage of the vote and seats allocated to any particular party.
The "twist" is that voters have an alternative to giving what is essentially a "party vote" to the person who heads a particular party's list.
Voters may instead choose to make a "preference vote" by specifically naming a candidate lower on the party list, and if that candidate receives more preference votes than the total number of valid party votes divided by the total number of seats for that party, he or she is elected.
Local favorites can therefore still be elected, even if the party primary might not have put them in a high position on their list.
The Dutch system creates the possibility for new entrants and smaller parties to win seats, enhancing democracy because new and different voices are heard.
It also necessitates procedures in the legislature whereby individual legislators cannot speak on all issues. Instead, parties appoint spokespersons on each major topic so that debate in the legislature is focused and represents the party position.
It also ensures the debates don't go on endlessly.
Some countries -- including Taiwan -- do also have a minimum percentage of votes a party must receive in order to have seats in the legislature.
As seen in the results of the Jan. 12 elections, the 5 percent threshold is probably too high and might need to be lowered to about 3 percent if other voices are to be heard.
Remember, Taiwan's democracy is still a work in progress. It is up to Taiwanese to really make it work.
Gerrit van der Wees is editor of Taiwan Communique, a publication based in Washington.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
A large majority of Taiwanese favor strengthening national defense and oppose unification with China, according to the results of a survey by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC). In the poll, 81.8 percent of respondents disagreed with Beijing’s claim that “there is only one China and Taiwan is part of China,” MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a news conference on Thursday last week, adding that about 75 percent supported the creation of a “T-Dome” air defense system. President William Lai (賴清德) referred to such a system in his Double Ten National Day address, saying it would integrate air defenses into a
RSS