Even those without legal training know that the constitution is the most fundamental law of a country. Since the start of the legislative session, three legislators from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) coalition — KMT Legislator Wu Tsung-hsien (吳宗憲), KMT Legislator Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) and TPP Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) — have prioritized the introduction of several amendments that would expand legislative powers.
The goal of these amendments is to help the opposition manipulate the constitutional system, making it easier to comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s requirements for Taiwan and allow the opposition to smoothly seize administrative resources.
Fortunately, the Cabinet followed the constitutional system and challenged the legislation in the Constitutional Court, allowing the judiciary to make a ruling on these harmful and unconstitutional provisions. The court’s ruling followed the spirit of the Constitution — they determined that most of the amendments were unconstitutional, especially those that would grant lawmakers broader investigative powers because they would lead to a situation where expanded legislative powers would undermine executive authority.
The Cabinet has acted entirely in accordance with the Constitution, yet Weng unexpectedly proposed that the Legislative Yuan need not comply with the court’s ruling. Alarmism like this is detrimental to the constitutional system. Weng and Huang each hold a doctorate in law, while Wu has previously served as a prosecutor. Even with such prestigious legal backgrounds, they are willing to play with the law and ignore the constitutional order merely to obtain political power.
Even though the opposition coalition holds a legislative majority, the results of the presidential election granted executive power to the Democratic Progressive Party. The KMT-TPP coalition hopes to use their majority to prevent President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration from promoting policies beneficial to Taiwan, thereby paralyzing further progress.
However, our constitutional system is not so easily harmed. Legislative powers cannot undermine executive powers, nor can they compromise the Constitution or the nation. Taking that step would inflict irreversible damage from which our country might never recover.
If even our legislators say that we need not comply with the constitutional system, why should the public even bother to follow national law? This ideology would lead to chaos — the true intention of the KMT-TPP coalition.
Chen Chi-nung is a political commentator.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
Source: Taipei Times - Editorials 2024/11/09
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