A number of legal amendments to expand the powers of the Legislative Yuan were enacted last month by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislative caucuses. In response, the Executive Yuan, in accordance with its powers and responsibilities, sent the amendments back to the Legislative Yuan for reconsideration.
In a vote in the Legislative Yuan on Friday, the KMT and TPP, as widely expected, used their legislative majority to reject the reconsideration request, which means that the amendments would be implemented.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government would now proceed to seek judicial relief by requesting a constitutional interpretation, in hopes of stopping this bill, which is an abuse of power and would disrupt the operation of constitutional government.
Sixty percent of the public are in favor of reconsidering the amendments, opinion polls show. Hundreds of academics in the fields of law and political science, along with bar associations and people in the legal community, have publicly warned about where the amendments might lead.
As for the wider public, 100,000 people have surrounded the Legislative Yuan in protest.
If the opposition insists on going its own way, destroying the Constitution and disrupting the government under the guise of reform, and continue to push forward other motions that abuse power, as well as “money pit” spending bills, people might start to wonder whether there is a larger plot behind these series of actions, and where the KMT and TPP want to take Taiwan’s democracy.
The amendment bill has many problems that are obvious to anyone. It involves human rights infringements that have been likened to the Legislative Yuan setting up its own interrogation chamber.
The provisions do not limit the requirements and scope of the “legal entities, groups or relevant persons in society” who might be subject to investigation, and this omission could result in ordinary people being required by the Legislative Yuan to provide information at any time or appear in person to testify or express opinions, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said.
These conditions would amount to arbitrary investigations and contravene the principle of proportionality, Cho added.
“The science and technology community are probably very scared, because we have a lot of production secrets, or research and development secrets,” Minister of Economic Affairs Kuo Jyh-huei (郭智輝) said during a question-and-answer session in the Legislative Yuan.
The Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Agriculture also said they have received phone calls from many religious and social groups, and farmers and fishermen’s associations who expressed their worries about “having to go to the Legislative Yuan.”
Unbelievably, the KMT and TPP want to expand the Legislative Yuan’s investigative powers to even include rank-and-file military personnel.
Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄), who is a lawyer, objected to this, saying that if the legislators directly aimed their questions at military personnel, it would “seriously infringe on potentially confidential information.”
The KMT and TPP are using their combined legislative majority to expand their power by interfering in civil and administrative departments, and reviewing cases that are under investigation by judicial and control agencies. They are also requiring the president to regularly report to the Legislative Yuan and answer lawmakers’ questions. With this attitude, opposition legislators are acting as if they are the ones in power.
This approach is like leverage in business. Having just one more legislative seat than the DPP, the KMT found an affiliate minor party in the form of the TPP to cobble together a small majority.
It is using this slim majority to expand the legislature’s power in an unprecedented way and override other constitutional organs of government. The two parties are using “reform of the legislature” to force through their amendments under false pretenses, and are now pushing for many controversial legal amendments.
For example, they have proposed an amendment to the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例). They want to add the words: “however, this shall not apply to those that have been affiliated with the state,” to the definition of “affiliated organizations.” This amendment is thought to be aimed at letting the China Youth Corps off the hook.
Opposition legislators have also proposed to amend the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法), so that broadcasters whose license has been revoked, but have applied for administrative remedy, would continue to have a valid license until a final judgment has been made. This amendment would apply retroactively, and is seen as paving the way for the resurrection of specific TV stations.
In addition, the opposition parties have proposed various other bills, including three draft laws concerning transportation construction in Hualien and Taitung counties, as well as amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) and the Senior Citizens Welfare Act (老人福利法), which would increase pressure on the central government, as it would have to pay the associated expenditures.
This contravenes the Constitution’s stipulation that states: “the Legislative Yuan shall not make proposals for an increase in the expenditures in the budgetary bill presented by the Executive Yuan.”
Bills that favor specific groups or regions are not ones that benefit the nation and its public. Instead, they would distort and worsen the distribution of resources and eventually paralyze the government.
The opposition parties are trying to grab power and get their hands on money.
The KMT has an advantage over other parties at the county and city levels, so it is keen to amend the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures to obtain more financial resources from the central government.
Financial academics have said that this act is all about “revenues” and “expenditures,” but all versions of the opposition parties’ proposed amendments have a common blind spot: They only focus on “revenue,” or how much money the central government should release to localities and how it should distribute those financial resources after they are released — all without a comprehensive discussion.
In some cases, the amount of money to be allocated to certain counties and cities is higher than their total annual expenditure. This would lead to a proliferation of unused or abandoned buildings constructed with public funds, and a gross misallocation of social welfare resources.
Furthermore, huge releases of financial resources by the central government are likely to upset the economy, taking funding away from science and technology budgets, which would make Taiwan less competitive.
All these disruptive activities make people wonder whether the opposition parties are, in the shadows, aiming to restore the old party-state system, but in a new form, by using legal amendments to allow the KMT’s affiliate organizations to retrieve their ill-gotten party assets, and by decentralizing financial resources to give the KMT more funds to control local factions. This threatens the feared return of the “black gold” politics.
The KMT, which has been out of power for many years, has no intention of bringing about reforms. Rather, it is hunkered down in the Legislative Yuan and using it to undermine democracy while ushering in legal amendments designed to consolidate conservative forces. Under the pretense of reform, it seeks to restore the old regime.
Reform of the legislature is necessary, but that does not mean blindly expanding the powers of the legislature while rejecting any legal amendments that require self-discipline and self-supervision.
Less than half a year has passed since Feb. 1, when the current legislature commenced. During that time, the KMT and TPP have become more unscrupulous and apparently have no qualms about undermining the constitutional order.
About one-third of the KMT’s legislators set time aside to rush to China and meet with senior officials responsible for Beijing’s “united front” strategy.
While KMT local party branches were holding meetings to explain the bills they were proposing, some people were on the sidelines mobilizing attendees to sign a proposal for a referendum on a cross-strait peace agreement. These moves echo China’s push for unification.
President William Lai’s (賴清德) statement in his inaugural address that “the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other” is in line with international reality, but the KMT accused him of being provocative and absurdly claimed that our national territory is shaped like a begonia leaf — meaning the shape of the whole historical Republic of China, including what is now the independent nation of Mongolia.
A KMT legislator carelessly referred to “the central authorities in Beijing” and a like-minded non-party legislator talked about “our Xi Jinping (習近平).”
KMT and TPP party officials rushed to China’s Fujian Province to take part in the annual Straits Forum, which is a platform for Beijing’s “united front” policies. Some participants from Taiwan also talked about being “stalwart Chinese” and said we should “insist that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family.”
These words and actions are a far cry from the values pursued by most Taiwanese, so why do the KMT and TPP act so tough, expanding and abusing their power, and undermining our hard-won democratic system? One possible explanation is that they are “borrowing their courage” from China.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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