The Central Election Commission on Tuesday decided to merge the next presidential election and the legislative elections.
Because legislative elections must by law be held before the next legislative session begins on Feb. 1, Tuesday’s decision means the next presidential election, which was supposed to be held in March next year, will take place in January, meaning there will be an unprecedented four-month gap between the presidential election and the swearing in of the president-elect on May 20.
Saying the simultaneous elections would save NT$500 million (US$17.24 million) in taxpayers’ money and reduce the impact of social and political mobilization, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hailed the decision as one that meets public expectations.
The public supports saving public resources and reducing the frequency of the nation’s elections, which, being held almost every year, have long been criticized as a time-consuming waste of resources. In terms of shaping a more cost-effective administrative system, holding combined elections surely comes across as a positive decision.
However, the KMT government’s haste to implement combined elections — especially for the two national votes that pertain to the country’s administrative and constitutional stability — appears dubious.
If the government is truly concerned about cutting costs and reducing the social impact of elections on the public, why didn’t it tackle the matter shortly after President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) assumed office in 2008? Why did the Ma administration wait three years to rush through the merging of two important elections before existing laws governing them could be amended?
It is no surprise, therefore, that commentators have speculated there was a political motive behind Ma’s rush to merge the elections. This is not the first time accusations have surfaced that the KMT changed the rules of the game to reduce the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) odds of winning an election. For example, the KMT decided in 2009 to postpone an election for Taipei County commissioner to upgrade the county to a special municipality. This move was perceived by many as an attempt to prevent former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) of the DPP — who was seen as having a better chance of beating then-Taipei county commissioner Chou Hsi-wei (周錫瑋) of the KMT — from winning the election.
With next presidential election to take place in January, about 50,000 first-time voters will miss out on their right to vote. Moreover, a so-called “constitutional lapse” is cause to worry despite government officials’ repeated dismissal of these concerns.
While officials have repeatedly said Taiwan’s democracy is mature enough to oversee a smooth transfer of power despite a four-month gap, that the governing party is willing to force through merged presidential and legislative elections despite the possibility of a constitutional crisis is dumbfounding.
Ma often preaches that all matters should be dealt with according to the law. Which makes it all the more hypocritical for the KMT, led by Ma, to change the rules for its own partisan interest.
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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