Sat, Jun 29, 2024 page8

• Legislative reform bills show KMT’s true colors

  • By Michael Lin 林正二
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  Given the blue and white camps’ combined legislative majority, the Executive Yuan’s motion to send the legislative reform bills back for reconsideration was voted down by the Legislative Yuan, thus exposing the true color of the opposition parties.

  The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has no interest in applying its critical faculties and has no progressive ideas. It only wants to take shortcuts and enact questionable laws to restrain President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration. It does not want to focus on the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government’s policies on foreign/cross-strait affairs, economy, culture and education, and has failed to propose its own policies to compete with those of the DPP.

  However, the KMT does not seem to realize that the legislative reform bills might cause great harm to public rights and interests, and the side effects are so great that even high-school and junior-high students took part in street demonstrations against the amendments. It is unbelievable that no one in the whole party can see its obvious mistakes, and point out the loopholes and deficiencies in the bills. This matter has exposed the authoritarian, pedantic, opportunistic and lazy character of the party.

  Blue-camp politicians and supporters subscribe to a “party-state” ideology, believing that the Republic of China was founded by the KMT in 1912 and should be continuously ruled by it. They do not have the democratic concept that power transfer is a norm in democratic countries. Therefore, no matter how good the DPP is doing, they insist on finding fault where there is none. They throw unfounded claims to smear and discredit the green camp, which only demonstrates the authoritarian nature of the KMT.

  The blue camp has pushed through these amendments to further expand the power of the legislature. Apart from trying to paralyze the Lai administration to regain power, it is even willing to erode and abuse the human rights of Taiwanese.

  The KMT is full of members with a corrupt, outdated and opportunistic mindset, and many of the blue-camp politicians are focused on gaining power to increase their wealth. They know how to satisfy the needs of local people through small favors, and use their power to collude with the local heavyweights for their gains.

  It is because of such character that the blue camp took the most convenient way out, passing amendments such as contempt of the legislature and restraining “officials’ counterquestioning of lawmakers” that breach the principle of separation of powers. This way, the Lai administration can be blamed for everything and stop it from moving forward.

  The blue camp’s goal is to win back power in 2028 by citing the DPP’s lack of political achievements. Although there might be a few idealists in the blue camp, they can only survive in an authoritarian system by flattering the party leadership. They know that the bills are flawed, but are too invested in the lie — like the ministers in the folktale who were aware their emperor was naked — to point out those flaws.

  The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), ostensibly led by Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), has been dominated by caucus whip Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌).

  Relying on the KMT to bolster its power and enhance Huang’s chances of running for New Taipei City mayor on behalf of the blue camp, the TPP has become even more opportunistic than before. It has already lost the justice, fairness and progress that Ko and Huang promised when they first entered politics, and is being dumped by young people with its future in doubt.

  Michael Lin is a retired diplomat.

  Translated by Eddy Chang
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