The mass recall movement targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators has become an invincible civic movement. Instead of calling upon his party members to make amends before it is too late, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) put the cart before the horse — those who plant the mines blame those who tried to remove them.
Obviously, Chu is not trying to tell his party’s lawmakers to stop messing around. He urged President William Lai (賴清德) to stop this mass recall campaign, which reflects his and his party’s lack of democratic temperament.
The KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) act wantonly in the legislature. They are the cause of chaos. The electorate, not being able to recall the TPP’s legislators-at-large, has no choice but to vent their anger on KMT legislators by mass recalls. It is the consequence that they have to bear.
Chu is reversing cause and effect, chickening out in admitting the KMT’s own actions, just as his party refused to apologize for the 228 Incident and urging everyone to “look forward not backward” and not to “polarize the community.”
Is Chu aware that the opposition party should be overseen by the voters, as well as the opposition overseeing the ruling party? For an opposition party, the best would be to deliver excellent views, nurture outstanding talents and be ready to replace the ruling party. The second best would be to oversee the ruling party as a responsible opposition party without possessing the ability to rule. The worst would be to indulge in self-inflation and abuse its power. It would not care about upending the political landscape, ruining the constitutional system or scourging the nation.
This mass recall campaign aims at troublemakers who are already the public’s enemy, giving the opposition party a wake-up call.
What people want is an effective administration, but not a paralyzed one. To oversee a government is not to tie its hands to impede its action. An opposition party that only knows how to cause obstruction is not doing its job properly.
In a democratic country, an electorate oversees the ruling party and the opposition with their votes. This is what the electorate is doing to stop KMT legislators from slashing budgets for national defense and the domestic submarine project, cutting the central government’s annual budget, and rejecting nominees for the Constitutional Court, immobilizing it.
The legislature has turned into a monster. There is no reason to stop the mass recall campaign.
During recess or before a legislative session begins, KMT lawmakers did not go to democratic countries such as the US, Japan or European countries that are friendly to Taiwan. Instead, they flocked to communist China that covets Taiwan’s sovereign territory.
What did KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) talk about with Chinese officials when he was, as he put it, “representing Taiwan’s central government”? What promises did he make? This is something that could have led to his execution during the administration of former presidents Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國).
KMT legislators argued that they do not have to report in advance or afterward. Is this acceptable?
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired National Hsinchu University of Education associate professor.
Translated by Fion Khan
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