When the legislature decided in 2004 to cut the number of legislative seats from 225 to 113, it wasted a great deal of taxpayers’ money. It could have just kept the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), Democratic Progressive Party, Taiwan Solidarity Union and People First Party caucus whips, the legislative speaker and the deputy legislative speaker. That is because these six people are all you need they are the ones who participate in caucus negotiations, and they are the ones who decide what counts. All the other legislators are only there to give moral support and to pass the laws this select group has agreed should be passed.
The Cabinet is built on a simple principle. If the opinions of legislators from the different political camps differ during the regular legislative session, those who oppose the matter at hand will block the legislative agenda and bring the legislature to a standstill. The law in question will be subjected to caucus negotiations, which will freeze any progress for about a month. To improve their bargaining position, the opposing party or parties will hold the bill hostage to a raft of other issues that they want passed, which means that in the end, most proposals never make it through the legislature and pile up to the last day of the legislative session.
On that day, it will be impossible to pass this pile of bills and amendments, and most legislators will sit around waiting for the outcome of the caucus negotiations that will decide how effective this session has been. After the caucus whips have struck their deals behind closed doors, the dozen or so laws and amendments deemed most important will be bundled together, and while the other legislators try to find out which bills will be passed, the speaker strikes the gavel for the third reading and thanks everyone for a job well done.
This process may be faulty, but it is still how every legislative session ends.
The latest session was no different, except for the fact that it created a lot of trouble. On Friday, the legislature passed a controversial amendment to the Accounting Act (會計法), Article 99-1. The amendment decriminalizes the act of including false receipts when academics submit their research expense accounts, and in one fell swoop clears hundreds of academics of corruption charges in connection with past research expense accounts. The amendment also means that the use of public funds at hostess bars would be decriminalized, an offense for which former legislator and deputy Taichung County Council speaker Yen Ching-piao (顏清標) is currently in jail.
No one knows if the caucus whips struck this deal to avert an academic crisis or if it was to get Yen off the hook. However, judging by how there was no news about this amendment until almost midnight on the last day of the session, when it was included second to last among a large number of laws and amendments and quietly snuck through the legislative review, it seems that it was not a move intended to solve a crisis in academic circles. It is more likely that it was a matter of favors and political interests and an attempt to get Yen out of jail.
The passing of the amendment has set off a storm of protests from across society criticizing the legislators in charge of the negotiations for engaging in closed-door politics. However, if the negotiators are the main culprits, the other legislators are accomplices. If this amendment is designed to get Yen off the hook, the president should not promulgate it and instead the legislature should propose a new amendment that is acceptable to the public.
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
On Friday last week, tens of thousands of young Chinese took part in a bike ride overnight from Henan Province’s Zhengzhou (鄭州) to the historical city of Kaifeng in search of breakfast. The night ride became a viral craze after four female university students in June chronicled their ride on social media from Zhengzhou in search of soup dumplings in Kaifeng. Propelled by the slogan “youth is priceless,” the number of nocturnal riders surged to about 100,000 on Friday last week. The main road connecting the two cities was crammed with cyclists as police tried to maintain order. That sparked
RSS