Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Jiang/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
TAIWAN’S ONGOING CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS remains unresolved, as the impasse about the Executive Yuan refusing to sign a fiscal allocation bill passed by the Legislative Yuan continues.
This is the first time in Taiwanese history that the Premier of the Executive Yuan has refused to sign a bill passed by the Legislative Yuan. Premier Cho Jung-tai, as well as the DPP as a whole, has called on the KMT to file a motion of no-confidence in him as premier if they disagree with his actions.
Cho refusing to sign the bill is exercising de facto veto power on the part of the Executive Yuan. The Executive Yuan would, in this sense, be arrogating for itself a veto power, such as exists in other government setups across the world, but which is not present in the Taiwanese political system.
With regards to the fiscal allocation bill, which would increase the subsidies that go from the central government to local governments, one can observe that the DPP-controlled executive branch of government is continuing to fight with the pan-Blue camp-controlled legislature about which branch of government holds the powers of budgeting.
Perhaps with the view that the pan-Blue camp is no longer able to win presidential elections, the KMT and TPP have sought to reduce the power of the judiciary and executive branches of government. In the past two years, the legislature has sought to pry budgetary, investigative and prosecution powers, media regulatory powers, and maritime security-related powers from the Executive Yuan. The Constitutional Court, too, was frozen through legislation that mandated ten justices to sit on the bench for constitutional interpretations to be made, then refusing to approve any further appointments to the Constitutional Court for interpretations to occur. As such, there are currently only eight justices on the Constitutional Court.
Normally, the Constitutional Court would be called on to adjudicate the Executive Yuan’s actions. Surprisingly enough, shortly after Cho’s actions, five justices from the Constitutional Court moved that the KMT’s legislation that froze the Constitutional Court was illegal.
Shortly thereafter, it emerged that three of the justices of the Constitutional Court did not agree with the Constitutional Court ruling against its freezing in such a manner. Instead, they argued for political solutions that would result in the unfreezing of the Constitutional Court, presumably through some kind of consensus being arrived at between the two parties. At present, it does not look like a solution to the freezing of the Constitutional Court will arrive from the Constitutional Court itself.
As for Cho, Cho’s actions are generally thought to be a high-stakes negotiating move aimed at forcing the KMT to back down from the freeze, seeing as the Constitutional Court can take action to prevent the Executive Yuan from unilaterally deciding that it has a veto power where none existed before.
The alternative is that, if the legislature files a motion of no-confidence in Cho, Lai Ching-te, as president, has the authority to dissolve the legislature and call for a new set of elections. It is unlikely that the TPP, as a pan-Blue-aligned third party in the legislature that could potentially be wiped out by a new set of elections, would agree to this. The KMT itself may be cautious of potentially doing worse in a new set of elections as compared to its success surviving the Great Recall Movement and waiting it out until the next round of elections.
But with the Constitutional Court apparently not in a position to unfreeze itself, the deadlock continues regarding Taiwan’s ongoing constitutional crisis. And while past constitutional crises were events that led to strong public upheavals, this does not seem likely to take place this time, particularly with the public distracted after a stabbing incident in Taipei that left four dead, including the attacker.
The lack of attention to the constitutional crisis probably benefits the DPP, in that there will be no public challenge to the new authority that the Executive Yuan has claimed for itself. Likewise, the Constitutional Court remaining frozen means that it will not move against the Executive Yuan’s new veto power on its own. The ball is in the KMT’s court about what to do, in this sense. It is to be seen if the KMT will back down in the face of the DPP’s challenge to it.