The (hopefully) last ever National Assembly started yesterday in YangMingShan. The 300 members only job is to vote once on a package of constitutional reforms; given that they don’t even have to decide how they are going to vote (their parties have told their members how to vote), this is a job that trained monkeys could do pretty reliably in less than a day. They wouldn’t do it with the same style as Taiwanese politicians though …
The three members of the ‘Democratic Action Alliance’ took first prize for stupid behaviour on day one:
Chang, Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) and Huang Kuang-kuo (黃光國) announced on the first day of the National Assembly session that they were quitting and accused major political parties of perfunctorily preparing the constitutional amendment package last year under populist pressure without due deliberation.
So the grand plan of this party of nobodies is that each day the three members will quit their posts – to be replaced by three new members the following day. They are doing this to protest the fact that these amendments are popular.
Chang claimed that only 19 percent of the public supports the amendment package, while more than three-quarters refuse to endorse it.
… or perhaps they’re doing it because these amendments are unpopular. They seem to be claiming it both ways. However, their principled stand did have some limits:
They, however, joined other deputies in taking a group picture to commemorate the inauguration of the last National Assembly and attending a sumptuous lunch.
Food before principles, it would seem. Assuming that this is a foretaste of more idiotic behaviour, some members have taken action:
To get all deputies to behave, the lady deputies of the ruling party issued their “ten commandments” warning against drinking bouts, night parties, and above all, exhibitionism.
It isn’t clear whether fistfights are banned under this edict …
But will the vote go through?
All this moronic behaviour does detract from the serious business of voting. Despite a last minute panic by the DPP, it is looking likely that the two major parties will enforce their party line properly – and so the ammendments will succeed. Both the DPP & KMT have promised to expel any members who vote against the bill – and the KMT have already removed one candidate who had spoken out against the amendments. This should ensure that the 75% vote required to pass the amendments will be acheived quite comfortably. Unfortunately, nothing is certain in Taiwanese politics …
Update: Day 2
The China Post has an excellent article on the continued misbehaviour of the National Assembly members. You’ve got to admire an article which starts like this:
Many of 300 National Assembly deputies turned megalomaniac yesterday, conveniently forgetting that they are in fact just rubber stamps.
2 Days now gone – and they’ve still acheived absolutely nothing
David,
As long as I’ve been paying attention to the news about this thing, I can’t say I’ve gained any understanding of it via said news.
One thing you’re certainly right about is how it should be finished in a single day.
An alternate explanation to what you mention above about the popular/unpopular contradiction might be that the push for *any* kind of constitutional reform is supported by the public but that the *package* of changes as presented for approval by this assembly may have quite a few detractors.
I’d bet that a good many Taiwanese voters approve of halving the number of seats in the legislature. Increasing their terms from 3 years to 4 may be an acceptable trade-off. If my interpretation of the parts about the legislature having control over initiating referenda or — especially with the current legislature — my understanding of the part about impeaching the president and vice-president is correct, these may *not* be acceptable trade-offs.
Is there something I don’t completely understand here? I sure feel like there is. (Oh, and I hope that my HTML works.)
Hi Tim,
The ‘unpopular’ issue comes purely from the low turnout at the NA elections – which is a direct result of the fact that the current process for constitutional reform is a mess. Voting in a National Assembly along party lines who will then (probably) vote the way you want on the reform package is just stupid – so people just didn’t vote; the low turnout is a justification for the abolition of the NA (i.e. one part of the reform).
The reforms to the legislature are (in my opinion) all good. I’ve got a few minor quibbles (e.g. the continued existence of ‘overseas Chinese’ seats), but it will result in a much more sensible legislature. It does make life more difficult for smaller parties – but not unfairly so (for example it is more conducive to a 3rd/4th party than the UK system, which quite happily handles 3 parties).
Impeaching the president has been made slightly easier (there’s no longer a requirement for a referendum on it) – but it still requires a 2/3rd majority – which practically speaking means that the president will have had to have lost support of a decent chunk of his own party. If you look at what happened in South Korea, impeachment on ‘trumped up’ charges just results in a huge sympathy vote for the impeached party anyway.
Finally, constitutional reform: as I mentioned, this *needs* changing because the current system is a mess. You could argue that the new system makes it too hard to get a reform passed (50% of the total electorate in a referendum is a tough requirement) – but the process is now logical: the legislature proposes and votes on a reform package, and then the people ratify it by referendum.