by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Economic Democracy Union/Screenshot
SEVERAL HUNDRED LAWYERS, along with two thousand supporters protested over the weekend in Taipei against a legislative proposal by KMT legislator Weng Hsiao-ling. In the wake of the protest, further demonstrations are planned by the Judicial Reform Foundation and a number of civil society groups.
These organizations range from feminist groups such as the Awakening Foundation, environmental groups as the Citizens of the Earth Taiwan, as well as other stalwarts of Taiwanese civil society such as the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, and the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights. As such, one can generally expect to see an all-out mobilization of Taiwanese civil society on the issue in the near future.
Weng Hsiao-ling’s legislative proposal has provoked such consternation because it would effectively freeze the Constitutional Court. The proposal would require that ten justices sit on the bench of the Constitutional Court in order to make judgments, rather than the simple majority that is currently required.
Namely, the Constitutional Court only has eight justices, after seven retired in October after the end of their term. It can be expected that the KMT will, following this proposal, act to block future nominations by the Lai administration to ensure that the Constitutional Court has less than ten justices.
In effect, the KMT would be continuing with its ongoing efforts to maximize legislative powers–seeing as in coordination with its ally, the TPP, the KMT currently holds a slim majority in the legislature–while stripping away powers from other branches of government it does not control. The Constitutional Court may be a particular obstacle for the KMT, seeing as it can block measures from the KMT through constitutional interpretation–as it did when it struck down the legislative powers sought by the KMT earlier this year.
Hence the priority on freezing the Constitutional Court. Nevertheless, the KMT has adopted the same strategy of attempting to freeze other sections of government by mandating a set number of committee members for decisions to be made. This can also be observed with regard to the National Communications Commission (NCC) at present.
Livestream of the demonstration
At other times, the KMT has called for shifting authority for sections of government to be placed directly under the legislature. Indeed, the KMT had previously called for placing the NCC under legislative control, as well as for the revival of the Special Investigative Division and placing this under the legislature rather than the Ministry of Justice–another means of accomplishing what the KMT sought with its new legislative powers.
The KMT’s power grab earlier this year triggered the series of protests known as the Bluebird Movement, which escalated to 100,000 participants from a mere hundred in the course of weeks. The rapid escalation of the protests represents the perceived sense of threat by members of society with regard to the KMT’s actions in the legislature, even if a great deal of initial public anger originated from violence in the legislature against DPP legislator Puma Shen.
Yet the KMT’s moves in the legislature were relatively convoluted. The targeting of a branch of government proves a much easier-to-understand threat to democratic institutions in Taiwan, particularly in light of how civic education enshrines the role of the separation of powers in terms of checks and balances.
Indeed, though the protest last weekend was not the largest in terms of numbers, it is rare for any kind of protest in Taiwan to mobilize a significant number of lawyers. Though the KMT has dismissed this, claiming that the participant lawyers are those close to the DPP, it risks turning the legal profession as a whole against it–and Taiwanese society has historically often respected the authority of professionals as teachers and doctors. One notes that among the participants in the demonstration last weekend was, in fact, Hong Hong-xia, who was appointed as a justice of the Constitutional Court under the Ma administration.
In this sense, it is very likely that the demonstration last weekend may be the prelude to a further round of protests in Taiwan. This would be a continuation of the Bluebird Movement mobilizations earlier this year, with the KMT having not given up its aims in maximizing legislative power in the face of notable public pushback.