Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Jiang/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
WITH THE DPP seeking a constitutional interpretation on the KMT’s attempt to block the Executive Yuan’s budget, the KMT has hit out at the move. The KMT has framed the matter as the DPP using its control of the Constitutional Court to block any and all measures pushed for by the KMT.
The KMT’s efforts to carry out the largest set of budget cuts in Taiwanese history, which would have cut or frozen up to 34% of all government operational spending, have provoked significant anger from the public. As a reaction to the KMT’s actions, an unprecedented campaign of recalls has been organized by civil society groups, targeting all KMT legislators. At present, it looks as though over 30 recall votes will be held against KMT legislators.
The KMT, too, has continued to deny that the recall has any standing in genuine anger from the public, insisting that they are DPP-organized. While the recall is a constitutional right in Taiwan, the KMT claims that the recalls are illegitimate and damaging to Taiwan’s democratic institutions. The KMT’s rhetoric has become increasingly hyperbolic, with party chair Eric Chu comparing the DPP to the Nazis, and the party terming the DPP to be enacting “Green Communism”.
Still, it is worth tracing back the causes for the current political crisis that has unfolded over the course of the past year and a half in Taiwan–roughly in the time since the 2024 elections. Many of the political contentions of this period go back to the KMT’s efforts to shift the balance of powers between Taiwan’s three major branches of government.
In seeking to drastically cut the budget, the KMT can be understood as attempting to seize power over the budget from the Executive Yuan, Taiwan’s executive branch of government. The legislature only has the power to review the budget, but it does not have budgetary powers in and of itself.
Last year, in the series of events that sparked what came to be known as the Bluebird Movement, the KMT sought to establish new investigatory powers that would allow legislators to summon individuals for questioning and impose fines on them for lying, refusing to comply, or “reverse questioning”, a vague charge that was understood to mean speaking back. The KMT’s actions sparked anger from civil society groups that saw such unaccountable use of powers as likely to be abused by KMT legislators to coerce military secrets out of members of the government or trade secrets out of private individuals, as well as that this was a throwback to past authoritarianism.
But the KMT’s actions could, too, be seen as attempting to shift powers from the executive and judiciary to the legislature, the only branch of government that it controls. In the same timeframe, the KMT also called for subordinating other government institutions that are under the remit of the Executive Yuan–such as the National Communications Commission or the Special Investigation Division of the Ministry of Justice–to legislative control.
When the Constitutional Court struck down the powers sought by the KMT last year as unconstitutional, the KMT next moved to freeze the Constitutional Court. This was accomplished by passing legislation that requires a threshold of justices to be on the bench of the Constitutional Court for majority rulings to be made, then refusing to confirm any appointments made by the Lai administration.
Currently, then, one sees how attempts by the KMT to frame the Constitutional Court as partisan and acting on behalf of the Lai administration continue. This has also taken place with the KMT framing a Constitutional Court ruling on capital punishment as a de facto abolition of capital punishment ordered by the Lai administration, though the Constitutional Court only narrowed the scope of capital punishment, and the death penalty remains on the books.
It is unclear how the Constitutional Court will frame its ruling. There is indeed a case for the KMT’s actions being unconstitutional, in violating the division of powers and system of checks and balances set up by the constitution, though the Constitutional Court is likely aware that it must frame any ruling as non-partisan because of the KMT’s attacks on it.