Taiwan's Pan-Blue Legislators: Wolves That Want to Guard the Sheep
Tuesday February 21, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.
Taiwan's troubles are deepening; its pan-blue dominated legislature still refuses to act on approving appointments to the Control Yuan. Like its refusal to act on arms procurement, this has gone on for over a year and no rationale has been provided. The number of rejections is twenty-seven and counting, but what is more important is that the Control Yuan, one of the five major branches of the government has been rendered ineffective for over a year.
The Legislative Yuan's refusal of consent further highlights the many inconsistencies and inadequacies of the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC). Mayor Ma Ying-jeou with his usual pabulum pronouncements states that the country should just carry out the Constitution and not revise it. The pan-blue refusals however show how a do nothing Legislature bent on control can stymie the best interests of the country.
The Control Yuan is the highest control organization of the Republic; its members are responsible for correcting government officials at all levels and generally monitoring the government including of course the assets and members of the Legislative Yuan. It is empowered to institute impeachment proceedings against public officials of the central and/or local governments.
This past year the Control Yuan has been unable to act on at least 11,617 cases concerning asset reports etc. because it does not have the personnel.
In effect what is happening is that the Legislative Yuan by refusing to even consider the President's appointees wants the right to totally control those that will be its auditors. It does not want to debate the appointees of the President based on their relative merits. Much like wolves wanting to control who will be appointed shepherds of the sheep, it keeps refusing in hopes that the President in frustration at not having a Control Yuan will finally appoint pan-blue members.
The ill-gotten assets of the Kuomintang (KMT) have always been a national problem. Now when the government branch in charge of monitoring assets is rendered ineffective, suspicions naturally arise. We have to listen to KMT caucus whip Pan Wei-kang state that in the upcoming Legislative session they will try to disclose more government scandals. We wonder what about past scandals?
Hwang Yih-jiau, the People's First Party's caucus whip states they want the Legislative Yuan to be a tiger with teeth - how ironic since at the same time the pan-blues make the Control Yuan a tiger without teeth.
The pan-blue camp that maintains only a one vote majority in the Legislative Yuan even threatens to try and take over the power of the Mainland Affairs Council. For anyone who knows the ins and outs of the 2004 Legislative Elections, with the nefarious single vote multiple member system knows that each was elected not on his/her own merits but because they just happened to get about 30,000 people to support them. (Reference my Dec. 14, 2004 entry Where Have All the Voters Gone?). Still the country is held hostage.
As with the arms procurement bills, Ma Ying-jeou, Chairman of the KMT since last July has promised that the party will provide its position on its refusals--albeit in the coming March. So we present the following multiple choice quiz. Comment is put after each answer.
Question: Why (after twenty-seven rejections) has it taken the KMT so long to finally state it will provide a rationale for rendering the Control Yuan ineffective for over a year? In answering, bear in mind that the KMT's rationale will still take at least another month to formulate.
A) Up until now the pan-blue legislative majority has been flying by the seat of its pants and operating with no rationale. (Possible, we've seen this before, but let's go beyond it.)
B) They want some kick-back in exchange for approving the President's nominees. As the majority that controls the vote, they want a reward for the power of that position. (Again a possibility, still there is no clear evidence to substantiate that.)
C) They want to embarrass President Chen Shui-bian and will automatically reject any of his nominees regardless of concern for the country. (This may be closer to the truth, but is it their only rationale?)
D) They only want their own people to be monitors of assets. (Past history substantiates this.)
E) Chairman Ma realizes that if he will be running for president to have continued rejections with no explanation by 2007 will look bad. (This also may be closer to the truth.)
F) All of the above.
G) None of the above, state your explanation. ______________________________ .
H) A combination of the above. List the letters here. __________________________ .
While one can only guess what kind of double speak the KMT's upcoming rationale for refusal will be phrased in, still what's your answer to the above?