Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out.
The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy.
Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the review a minute later before concluding the meeting at 9:03am.
The amendments proposed by the KMT would make recalls more difficult, including by requiring signatories to submit their IDs and mandating that the number of recall votes exceeds the votes the targeted official garnered when elected.
The DPP said that the proposal would make it more difficult for an unfit or incompetent official to be recalled. Even the Taiwan People’s Party — which has often sided with the KMT — expressed disagreements with aspects of the proposal.
With its numerical advantage over the DPP in the Legislative Yuan, the KMT has the upper hand when it comes to passing resolutions and it has other tools to help it get its way, such as raucous debate and physical confrontations.
However, KMT lawmakers blocking other elected officials from doing their job contravened fundamental democratic principals and rules of the legislature. The strategy might even have been unconstitutional.
It seems clear that the KMT wants to amend the act to protect its officials from recall and secure its legislative advantage, which it is using to obstruct President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration — the public and the nation be damned.
Moreover, KMT legislators on Tuesday changed the agenda for today’s plenary meeting, pushing back public welfare-related bills and prioritizing amendments to the recall act, as well as the Act Governing Allocations of Government Revenue and Expenditure (財政收支劃分法) and the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法). It is pushing for third readings of the proposed changes, oblivious to the objections from society and from other political parties, and even within KMT.
On March 17, 2014, KMT legislators forcibly approved a preliminary review of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement in 30 seconds without clause-by-clause examination. The event triggered the unprecedented Sunflower movement, which drove a student-led group to occupy the main legislative chamber, while an estimated 500,000 people protested the upending of democratic norms. The uproar led to the KMT’s disastrous defeats in the following local and national elections.
The KMT has not learned the lesson from the events of a decade ago, doubling down on its authoritarian and arbitrary nature to trample democracy.
While the KMT has a slight advantage in legislative seats after January’s elections, the totals of the constituency votes and party votes showed that the DPP was well ahead, meaning the KMT does not represent true public opinion.
While a previous attempt to expand its legislative power was ruled unconstitutional, it is yet to be seen how the KMT’s anti-democratic bills would trigger people’s anger and their determination to safeguard Taiwan’s democracy.
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