04.14.05
The collapse of Taiwan’s government
Without anyone really noticing, the government of the Republic of China collapsed on February 1st this year. The government is made up of five branches:
- The Legislative Yuan (this is the main ‘parliament’ which has all the foodfights and arguments)
- The Executive Yuan (the ‘cabinet’ appointed by the president)
- The Judicial Yuan (the legal system)
- The Examination Yuan (handles the civil service)
- The Control Yuan (a watchdog body)
The Legislative, Executive, Judical and Examination bodies are functioning as you would expect, but the Control Yuan has been stuck in limbo since the previous incumbents left office at the end of January. The problem is that the members of the Control Yuan are proposed by the President, and this is then ratified by the Legislature … unfortunately when (pan-Green) President Chen proposed a list of members to the (pan-Blue controlled) Legislature, they refused to ratify it. Until agreement is reached, the government will continue to operate without one of its core bodies.
In practical terms, this means that over 3000 appeal cases have built up over the last two months, with noone to look at them. Although this has hardly caused the nation to grind to a halt, it is fairly indicative of the paralysis in government caused by the antipathy between the Legislature and the Presidency (which has been ongoing for five years now).
An empty Control Yuan does seem to get as much done as a full Legislature though: As another example of the paralysis yesterday, all 33 bills proposed to the legislature were voted down by the KMT and the PFP - with the PFP (supposedly allies with the DPP nowadays) declaring ‘war’ on the DPP for not supporting their bill.
This state of affairs is one of the reasons put forward for constitutional reform (Do you really need 5 branches of government? What really is the separation of powers between the president and the legislature?). However, you need cross-party agreement on this, and with reforms that were already unanimously agreed upon last year now under doubt, reform is looking like the last thing on the agenda in Taiwan nowadays.
MeiZhongTai said,
September 9, 2005 at 5:10 pm
organizations and officials, including the powers to audit, censure, and impeach. In 2000, the Control Yuan lost its authority to impeach the President or VP but still lists it as one of its powers. Why explain all of this? David at Jujuflopblogged on a problem back in April: The Legislative, Executive, Judical and Examination bodies are functioning as you would expect, but the Control Yuan has been stuck in limbo since the previous incumbents left office at the end of January. The problem is
Politics from Taiwan » KMT legislators and the prosecutor-general said,
April 13, 2006 at 4:52 pm
[...] This paragraph sums up the paralysis gripping Taiwan’s political landscape perfectly. Corruption is a major problem in Taiwan - and yet a whole branch of government (the Control Yuan) responsible for investigating corruption in government has been virtually shut down by the opposition for a year. Of course, the Control Yuan has been a pretty ineffective organisation for decades - but then the opposition also promises to block any constitutional reform to improve that situation. As a result the prosecutor-general becomes a more high-profile and politically significant postion … which results in the opposition blocking the nomination for it. [...]
Politics from Taiwan » Illegal political donations said,
May 5, 2006 at 2:11 pm
[...] The semi-defunct Control Yuan recently reported on recorded political donations for last December’s local elections. An impressive amount of money was raised and spent by the politicians - and inevitably a large number of donations (around 400) were of dubious legality. However: Control Yuan Secretary-General Tu Shan-liang (杜善良) said that initial screening of accounting reports showed that there are a great number of suspected law violations, which can be determined only by the fourth Control Yuan, whose members have still not been confirmed and hence are unable to take over from the third Control Yuan members to start their six-year term in office. [...]
The View from Taiwan said,
June 13, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Taiwan can’t hold LY elections until the laws are updated, but the laws can’t be updated until the LY elections are held. What would happen then is anyone’s guess - the legislature would jointhe Control Yuan and the Examination Yuan in limbo with no obvious solution. The phrase ‘constitutional crisis’ might be a bit of an understatement at that point. Incidentally, it is the job of the Central Election Committee to propose the new rules and districts
Politics from Taiwan » The NCC: The Non-Constitutional Commission said,
July 24, 2006 at 5:45 pm
[...] Of course, if the existing NCC members make good on their threat to resign en masse, then we’ll have yet another body (along with the Control Yuan and Examination Yuan) sitting empty thanks to the sterling work of the Legislature. [...]
The Foreigner in Formosa: April 2006 said,
September 10, 2006 at 2:56 pm
[...] At this point, you might be asking yourself what the Control Yuan has to say about having its powers stolen like that. The answer is: Not much. The Control Yuan has been vacant for over a year now, because the legislature has steadfastly rejected all of President Chen’s nominees for that body. [...]
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