We’re a week into the latest session of Taiwan’s legislature – and we still haven’t had the opening speeches yet. The previous session (before the summer) set a record for the smallest number of pieces of legislation passed (and largest number of proposed legislation thrown out), but it seems they’re going for broke this time around and seeing if they can get through a whole session without even officially starting.

The problem seems to be that the pan-Blues in the Legislature just plain don’t like Frank Hsieh, the (pan-Green) premier[*]. Hsieh has been physically blocked from getting to the podium to give his speech – this included the usual farcical fights on the first day, but has since quietened down in to a stalemate where all the legislators are being paid close to half a million NT dollars each a month (over $13,000 USD) to sit around catching up on their reading.

The latest attempt to break the stalemate came from Hsieh – who suggested it be put to a vote whether he should give his report or not:

Hsieh made the new suggestion after lawmakers from the opposition “pan-blue alliance” of the KMT and the People First Party (PFP) twice blocked him from addressing the plenary session of the legislature on his Cabinet’s work agenda and its 2006 budget plan last week by occupying the podium of the legislative chamber.

This wasn’t received well by the pan-Blues who self-righteously (but correctly) pointed out it was his duty to do what they were preventing him from doing:

Noting that Constitution requires the premier deliver an administrative report at the beginning of a new legislative session, Tseng said it’s Hsieh’s official duty and cannot be a topic to be subject to a legislative vote.

The pan-Blues have given a set of demands which they want addressed before they’ll let Hsieh near a microphone:

The “pan-blue alliance” originally proposed earlier two prerequisites for Hsieh to deliver the administrative report — an apology from Hsieh for alleged Kaohsiung mass rapid transit (MRT) system construction scams and the DPP legislative caucus’ consent to the establishment of five legislative committees to look into five alleged corruption cases.

Is there any merit to these demands? In a word: No.

Although there is a good case to be made for Hsieh apologising, it isn’t something that is worth blocking the constitutionally mandated requirements of the Premier and the Legislature over. The fact that they are demanding a committee should be formed to investigate who to blame, while demanding Hsieh apologise before that committee has even started is a minor detail. At least it seems the KMT have now dropped this requirement. Which just leaves the demand for five legislative committees – which betray a fairly basic lack of understanding of the Legislature.

What is the role of the legislature?

There’s a clue in it’s name. The role of the legislature is to pass legislation. Of course, there is often a need to research new legislation, requiring that a legislative committee is set up. However, investigations into corruption are not the job of the legislature.

Taiwan has more branches of government than you can shake a stick at, and there are exactly two which have the constitutionally defined mandate to investigate these matters: The Judicial Yuan, and (oh no, not again) the Control Yuan.

Apart from the fact that you would hope that legislators would have a basic understanding of things like the constitution and the separation of powers between the various branches of government, the current batch of KMT legislators really should know this: just about the only thing the legislature did last year was to set up a committee to investigate the March 19th assassination attempt on Chen Shui-bian. To noones surprise, this committee was found to be unconstitutional and was thus rendered virtually powerless (it didn’t have the right to access confidential information from the police/hospitals, nor could it force anyone to testify).

Of course, if the pan-Blues are sincere in their demands for these instances of corruption to be investigated (and they definitely are cases which need to be investigated), then they should be demanding that the Control Yuan sets up some investigative committees. Unfortunately, the Control Yuan has no members at the moment … because the Legislature has been blocking its nominations for the last 10 months.

So, to sum up: the premier is being blocked from his constitutional duty until he agrees to set up a set of unconstitutional committees to do the job of a branch of government which will be kept in constitutional limbo at least until the premier does the job he is being blocked from. Does that make sense?

Update: Well, Hsieh finally got to give his report on Tuesday, apologised for the Kaohsiung Thai worker riot, and then got into a wonderfully intelligent argument with his predecessor as Kaohsiung mayor Wu Den-yih.

* It’s a classic Taiwanese irony that the pan-Blues are complaining that the Premier is chosen by the President and not by the Legislature. The Legislature used to select the Premier, but that was changed over a decade ago by the KMT in one of their constitutional amendments … because they were worried about a DPP majority in the Legislature (but strangely not worried about a DPP president). Oops.