The Legislative Yuan passed legislation on Tuesday aimed at supporting the middle-aged generation — defined as people aged 55 or older willing and able to work — in a law initially proposed by Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Wu Chun-cheng (吳春城) to help the nation transition from an aged society to a super-aged society. The law’s passage was celebrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the TPP.
The brief show of unity was welcome news, especially after 10 months of political fighting and unconstitutional amendments that are damaging democracy and the constitutional order, eliciting concern in all forms, from readers’ letters to academic groups to presidential speeches.
One should be disabused of the notion that this small opening of reason and political consensus was anything but an exception. We can still expect more of the same chaos, turmoil, fisticuffs and accusations of political persecution from the blue and white opposition, and of the former’s treason and collusion with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from the ruling DPP. If anything, we can expect the situation to deteriorate over the coming year.
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) editorial published today gives a more accurate picture of what is happening in the legislature: TPP Acting Chairman Huang Kuo-chang’s (黃國昌) claims of “political persecution,” seemingly driven more by enmity for the DPP than any appeal to the national interest; accusations of “green terror” — an absurd feat of projection — by the KMT against President William Lai (賴清德) and the DPP; a battle for the structural integrity of the five-branch system of government and the effective operation of the Constitutional Court and constitutional order; and the virtual takeover of the opposition’s agenda by KMT legislative caucus leader and dodgy politician par excellence Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁).
The Liberty Times editorial is clear that what the KMT and TPP legislators are doing is against the national interest and must be stopped, and that the DPP has to do more to resist their actions, supported by civil society. It does not say how.
The DPP caucus moved this week to oust Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), accusing him of flagrant partisanship. That notion was shelved by the KMT and the TPP. According to Article 8 of Regulations on Electing the Legislative Speaker and Deputy Speaker by Legislators (立法委員互選院長副院長辦法), such a decision would need to be supported by more than two-thirds of all members present. It was doomed to fail, because of the very thing causing the problem: The DPP lacks a majority, and everyone votes along party lines.
If the proposal was purely performative in nature, it is difficult to see the point of it. Nobody needs to be made aware that the problem exists.
The piece by Lai Rung-wei (賴榮偉) on today’s page is more explicit with what needs to be done: a mass recall of KMT legislators. An article published yesterday, entitled “To tame the legislature, support mass recall,” by Susie Su (蘇拾瑩), is of the same opinion. This solution was inspired by recent comments by DPP legislative caucus leader Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). Opposition lawmakers, predictably, pushed back, saying that they would launch recall drives against DPP legislators.
We have been down this road before: Recall followed by revenge recall, some justified, most purely political manipulation of the system, a few successful, others not. Voters must be given the right of recall, but it must be used sparingly and as a final recourse.
Ker’s suggestion, which was not supported by other DPP members, is not a solution, and if it fails it would only exacerbate the enmity between the parties and lead to a cascade of revenge recalls and the kind of political chaos that would give the CCP an excuse to intervene to “restore order.” That would be playing right into the CCP’s, and Fu’s, hands.
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