Modern democracies are usually divided into a tripartite framework with an executive, a legislative and a judicial branch, dividing responsibilities between accountable government, legislative oversight and judicial authority, all in the hope of achieving good governance.
When US Federal Judge James Robart recently blocked US President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens of seven Muslim countries from entering the US, it was an example of how the judicial branch supervises the government and stops it from abusing its powers.
The Republic of China (ROC) Constitution prescribes a five-branch framework, which perhaps could be called a “deformed” tripartite system with Chinese characteristics.
The five-branch system, which originated in China, is a continuation of the traditional Chinese system of government with two branches for assessing and supervising government personnel.
Nevertheless, the differences between the five-branch system and the three-branch system are relatively minor. There is nothing particularly clever about the five-branch system, as its main feature is merely that it separates the personnel issue and hands it over to the examination and supervisory powers.
The five-branch system is not an attempt to expand the Western triangular relationship into a pentagonal relationship; rather, it isolates the examination and supervisory functions in the triangular framework — executive, legislative and judiciary — and assigns them to personnel matters, thus creating another triangular framework consisting of the executive, the examination and supervisory branches.
It creates a main tripartite framework that divides responsibilities between the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and a minor tripartite framework for handling personnel assessment and supervision between the executive, examination and supervisory branches.
In theory, there is nothing inherently wrong with separating the assessment and supervisory powers. However, in practice, the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan are not operating effectively and they have long been used to reward people for political services or as a tool in political warfare.
In addition, they have come to be seen as symbols of reactionary forces, opposition to reform and confused conservatism. As an example, the Examination Yuan is perhaps the strongest opponent of pension system reform for military personnel, civil servants and public-school teachers.
It is clear that this five-branch system is inferior to the three-branch system and that it gives rise to many other flaws and irregularities. Furthermore, since there are no major differences between a five and a three-branch system, abolishing the Examination and Control branches to become a three-branch system — which is based on solid theoretical foundations and practical experience — would not have a big impact requiring a lot of systemic changes.
The five-branch system must be reformed and hopefully the Democratic Progressive Party administration will adhere to its pre-election views and abolish the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan, and do so by allowing the general public to participate in writing a new constitution.
However, the Referendum Act (公民投票法) restricts the general public’s rights with respect to creating a new constitution. The government should start by amending the act.
That is the way to follow up on the promise to amend the Constitution and abolish the examination and control branches.
Hsu Ya-chi is youth convener of the Taiwan Solidarity Union’s Constitutional Group.
Translated by Perry Svensson
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the largest naval exercise in the region, are aimed at deepening international collaboration and interaction while strengthening tactical capabilities and flexibility in tackling maritime crises. China was invited to participate in RIMPAC in 2014 and 2016, but it was excluded this year. The underlying reason is that Beijing’s ambitions of regional expansion and challenging the international order have raised global concern. The world has made clear its suspicions of China, and its exclusion from RIMPAC this year will bring about a sea change in years to come. The purpose of excluding China is primarily
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the