Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Control Yuan
THE KMT AND TPP announced earlier this month that they will not be recommending any candidates for the Control Yuan.
The Control Yuan is one of the five branches of government, in the fivefold division of powers in the ROC constitution. It exists as an oversight body for the other branches of government, having responsibilities pertaining to fighting corruption, but also issuing recommendations for other branches of government. This is often carried out through launching investigations and publishing reports.
The KMT and TPP, then, are continuing in their efforts to stymie the operations of a branch of government. The past two years have seen the KMT and TPP seek to pry powers of budgeting away from the Executive Yuan and to instead arrogate such powers to the legislature, as occurred last year. Two years prior, the KMT and TPP previously provoked social outcry through attempting to drastically expand legislative power, in such a way as to pry powers of investigation that normally belong to the executive, judiciary, and Control Yuan to the legislature. Likewise, the KMT and TPP froze the Constitutional Court by passing laws that require a minimum number of justices to sit on the bench for there to be rulings, then refusing to nominate any new justices.
For its part, the KMT and TPP claim that the Control Yuan is simply being used as a weapon by the Lai administration against political opponents. The TPP is particularly interested in emphasizing this narrative, given that party founder Ko Wen-je currently faces a jail sentence of seventeen years on corruption charges. As the TPP is built around Ko, originally as a vehicle for Ko to run for president, the TPP is invested in the political narrative that Ko did nothing wrong, but that the DPP is targeting him in order to arrest a political critic.
The KMT has also lashed out at the fact that Chen Chu is head of the Control Yuan, but was on leave for over a year due to poor health. The KMT and TPP both seem to have ire against Chen, who was a longstanding political prisoner in the course of Taiwan’s democratization, and a major figure of the dangwai movement.
The terms of the current slate of Control Yuan members are set to end in July. By not making recommendations, the KMT and TPP very probably hope to decrease the political legitimacy of the Control Yuan.
This proves ironic, especially as the DPP has, in fact, made some appointments intended to signal bipartisanship. This seems to have been the logic behind appointing Michael You of the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation to become chair of the Central Election Commission. But the KMT and TPP clearly intend to stonewall the DPP when it comes to Control Yuan appointments.
At the same time, one notes that the DPP, KMT, and TPP alike all take the view that the Control Yuan should be phased out. There have long been calls to reduce the number of branches of government to three, on the three primary functions of government, with the view that the Control Yuan and Examination Yuan’s functions are redundant. Control Yuan head Chen Chu has herself stated in the past that she would be in favor of phasing out the Control Yuan.
Though the TPP claims that it aims to pass legislation that will let the DPP, in fact, act on phasing out the Control Yuan, the DPP has stated that until this occurs, the Control Yuan remains one of the five branches of government in the constitution. Instead, the DPP has criticized the KMT for seeking to obstruct the Control Yuan from functioning. Indeed, it might be challenging for all parties involved to change the constitution, given the steep legal barriers, which is another reason why the Control Yuan has remained, and it proves unlikely that there will be any compromise reached between the pan-Green and pan-Blue camps.