The Sunflower movement’s sit-in at the legislature has come to a peaceful end, but one of the most important issues prompting the protesters to occupy the Legislative Yuan is yet to be addressed: Taiwan’s constitutional system does not provide an adequate mechanism to deal with political gridlock.
Since former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) began the democratization process, Taiwan has undergone seven rounds of constitutional revision. However, these efforts did not produce a presidential or a parliamentary system, but rather a mix of both. In the eyes of academics and political scientists, the existing system lacks full operability.
Under the Constitution, the president is directly elected and the commander-in-chief has the power to appoint the premier, the power to chair the National Security Council and can also be the chairman of his or her party. With no effective mechanism to balance the position’s influence, the president is supremely powerful.
The Legislative Yuan, in contrast to the US Congress, lacks the powers needed to provide proper checks-and-balances. In particular, the powers of oversight, investigation and impeachment are in the hands of the Control Yuan, whose members are appointed by the president.
Under the Constitution, the premier is answerable to the Legislative Yuan, which makes the relationship between it and the Executive Yuan similar to a parliamentary system. The legislature can initiate a vote of no-confidence in the premier and if it passes, the premier can request that the president dissolve the legislature and call fresh elections. This is also similar to a parliamentary mechanism for resolving political gridlock.
However, in practice, a vote of no-confidence has very little chance of success because lawmakers do not want to initiate an election and the ruling party is likely to block the attempt by applying party discipline. This may prevent the premier from being toppled by the legislature, but it also perpetuates gridlock.
Moreover, under the Constitution, the premier cannot attach a vote of confidence to a bill that the Executive Yuan deems crucial and the president or the premier cannot dissolve the legislature and call for a fresh election without a vote of no-confidence. Consequently, the methods of resolving political difficulties in typical parliamentary systems are not applicable.
In addition, the public understands the importance of the legislature to democracy, but surveys in the past decade clearly show public disapproval and distrust of the Legislative Yuan. This could have been predicted given the very small size of the legislature, which now has 113 seats. Also, 75 percent of the members are elected by constituents. These members need to look after their constituencies so little time is devoted to in-depth policy deliberation.
There is a consensus in Taiwanese academia that the problem can only be resolved by a reform of the electoral system. Many believe a German system should be emulated, which would substantially increase the number of seats, with overall seats distributed based on proportional representation while half of the seats from single-member district elections would be retained.
Without major constitutional reform, it is likely that political gridlock will reoccur. This will undoubtedly hamper Taiwan’s good governance, economic development and democratic consolidation.
One major demand of the movement is for a national conference on the Constitution. As a political scientist by training and one who has worked within the system, I fully understand the problems associated with the Constitution and support reform into a presidential or parliamentary system. It is all about good governance and democratic consolidation, not sovereignty.
Political scientists frequently define democratic consolidation as the political rules of the game, ie, constitutional rules and norms, being accepted with no or very little challenge. Taiwan is a young democracy and many of its international partners support the nation based on the common values and beliefs of democracy. However, it will become a grave problem for Taiwan’s democratic consolidation if the constitutional rules of the political game are seriously challenged from within the system or from outside.
The Sunflower movement has challenged the rules of the game in the name of safeguarding democracy. The movement’s level of public support provides a significant impetus to an overhaul of the Constitution.
Taiwan wishes to stand tall among the community of democratic nations and contribute to needed democratic development in the region. Hopefully, its friends in the international community will voice their support for efforts to reform, for this will be the path to deepen Taiwan’s budding democracy.
Joseph Wu is the Democratic Progressive Party’s policy director and representative to the US.
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