Several US Taiwan experts gave a thumbs up to the constitutional package approved by the Legislative Yuan this week, saying it will lead to a more moderate, responsible legislature and a better overall quality of lawmaker in the future.
They also felt that the legislature's actions could blunt any momentum toward radical constitutional change in the future, and said they doubted China would react negatively to the changes that will result from this week's overwhelming vote in favor of the reforms.
"It's a welcome and much needed reform," said John Tkacik, a long-time Taiwan specialist at the conservative Washington-based think tank, the Heritage Foundation.
"All the things [in the package] are positive things that are needed," said former American Institute in Taiwan chairman Nat Bellocchi.
There was no surprise that the reform packaged was approved, given the bipartisan support from the pan-blue and pan-green camps, although Shelley Rigger, a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina, quipped, "it's surprising because it is very rare that politicians vote themselves out of a job," a reference to the decision to reduce the Legislative Yuan's size from 225 to 113 seats in 2008.
Tkacik stressed the package's moderating influence. With the current multi-seat districts and large size of the legislature, "an awful lot of extremists and unsavory people are elected to public office," he said. The new winner-takes-all system will be "a very moderating force on the politicians and the electorate," he said.
Rigger agreed. Under the new system, the parties "have to be responsible for the way they vote in the legislature. This was something where they felt the pressure so intensely that they had to go ahead and do it," she said.
Individual legislators "had to be made to toe the line," which the reforms will accomplish, she added.
China is not expected to react strongly, the experts contacted by the Taipei Times all felt.
"It's none of their business," said Bellocchi. "It shouldn't have any impact on China-Taiwan relations. It's just a local government doing what they want to do," he said. He drew a parallel with the elimination by Taipei of the Taiwan Provincial Government in the late 1990s, which China largely ignored.
Rigger called the changes envisioned in the constitutional package as "technical changes. I don't see these changes in any way changing Taiwan's relations with the mainland," she said.
If the at-large seats were eliminated, China's reaction would be different, she feels. "Those seats were meant to represent the people of China, writ large," she said. So, their elimination might have had symbolic meaning for Beijing, she said.
"I personally don't think China cares one way or the other," said Tkacik, who agrees that China will see this as a local matter, saying Taipei "can do whatever they want."
Turning to the referendum, Tkacik says that the Taiwan Solidarity Union's proposal to enact a civil referendum law allowing any group of citizens to collect signatures and put a referendum on the ballot "would have set the Chinese off." But the referendum law that passed, which requires a super-majority in the Legislative Yuan to propose a referendum, "is anodyne," Tkacik said.
For Rigger, the package "should come as a relief for people in Washington and Beijing who have been worrying about this constitutional reform ... this takes some of the wind out of the sails of the constitutional reform movement because rationalizing the legislature was a very popular reason to have constitutional reform. So I don't think it's going to be that easy to get up a head of steam for additional constitutions changes one this one is made," she said.
She said the current package "is not as problematic as it could have been," calling it "much more modest" than President Chen Shui-bian was talking about only a year ago.
Nevertheless, Bellocchi cautioned that Taipei "still has a long way to go" before the reforms are implemented. "There is a lot of work to do yet," he said.
It was not clear which party will stand to benefit or lose in the end from the approved package. "It's possible that the Democratic Progressive party (DPP) will not do as well" under the new rules, Tkacik said. However, he noted that given the current Legislative Yuan's size, the DPP "found it very difficult to find qualified candidates" to fill the seats.
If the package was proposed by the DPP and passed with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) support, "I would have been surprised," he said
But, since it was proposed by the pan-blue camp, "I have to go back and look at it again. It doesn't make sense that the KMT-PFP would benefit much. Which tells me it is possible the DPP sees some loophole that isn't apparent to the naked eye."
He drew an analogy with last year's referendum law, in which Chen recognized Article 17 as a loophole to call himself for an election-day referendum, despite pan-blue efforts to prevent him from doing so.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but