The constitutional reform the nation needs should be based on two fundamental ideas: human rights and reconstruction of the legislative system, Taiwan Democracy Watch said yesterday, criticizing recent calls for changes to be made to the government system by the major political parties as “insincere” and “incomplete.”
National Taiwan University law professor and watchdog group supervisor Yen Chueh-an (顏厥安) said constitutional amendments should not be seen as the equivalent of constitutional reforms.
“It is possible for constitutional amendments to be small bore or take a turn for the worse,” Yen said.
Taiwan’s second democratic reform — the first having been the dangwai (黨外, “outside the party”) movement and subsequent democratic activities over the past 20 to 30 years — should aim for greater human rights and re-establishment of the nation’s parliament, the group said.
“So far, the calls for constitutional amendments have been focused on changes to the existing government system, but what is required is a complete set of substantial reforms rather than parties haggling [over the wanted revisions],” National Taiwan University College of Social Sciences professor Liu Ching-yi (劉靜怡) said.
One part of substantial reforms would require the state to protect people’s rights more aggressively, rather than waiting for citizens to make claims on their own, she said.
“The branches of our government have long overlooked the issue of human rights and have a limited understanding of what human rights are. They have enthusiastically engaged in power struggles, but have never fought each other to defend the rights of the people, who are the ones who conferred them the power,” Liu said.
On reconstruction of the parliamentary system, Yen said the idea is to have legislature fortified with the power and responsibility over policy formation and decisionmaking, rather than passively “catering to” the executive branch or boycotting policy implementation.
In North America and European nations, elected representatives debate public policies and decisions in their legislative bodies and assume responsibility for policy execution afterward, Yen said.
Taiwan, which underwent a long period of both colonial and authoritarian rule, lacks a similar parliamentarian spirit, Yen said.
“Our representatives’ only function is to convey public opinion to whoever is ruling, or channel decisions from the ruling party to make official decisions in the legislature. The political status of the legislature and its members is far lower than that of the executive branch, to the extent that lawmakers have to take orders from party officials,” Yen said.
The watchdog proposed three systems that are based on the idea of parliamentary governance: a Cabinet system, with indirect presidential elections; a quasi-Cabinet system, with directly elected presidents who lack substantial power; or the US presidential system, which features a strong Congress.
“Keeping in line with the concept of a parliament, the abolishment of the Control Yuan, which fragments the legislature’s investigative power, and the Examination Yuan could be expected,” Academia Sinica associate research professor Chiou Wen-tsong (邱文聰) said.
“Political parties should also be regulated to prevent them from owning, investing or running for-profit businesses, and from possessing an amount of property that is unrelated to their mission,” Chiou said.
National Taiwan University law professor Chen Chao-ju (陳昭如) said both the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) put too much emphasis on the operational mechanisms of politics, but not enough on the protection of human rights.
The KMT’s call for constitutional amendments is “insincere,” as it endorses a Cabinet system, but avoids making proposals on electoral system reforms for the legislature and the party, while the DPP’s focus on the electoral system and its recent call for presidential power to dismiss the legislature, as a way to counteract the KMT’s Cabinet system, are “running the party against public discontent regarding the expansion of presidential powers that come with no responsibilities and are incomplete,” Chen said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
‘MALIGN PURPOSE’: Governments around the world conduct espionage operations, but China’s is different, as its ultimate goal is annexation, a think tank head said Taiwan is facing a growing existential threat from its own people spying for China, experts said, as the government seeks to toughen measures to stop Beijing’s infiltration efforts and deter Taiwanese turncoats. While Beijing and Taipei have been spying on each other for years, experts said that espionage posed a bigger threat to Taiwan due to the risk of a Chinese attack. Taiwan’s intelligence agency said China used “diverse channels and tactics” to infiltrate the nation’s military, government agencies and pro-China organizations. The main targets were retired and active members of the military, persuaded by money, blackmail or pro-China ideology to steal
RSS