Over the past two years, under the leadership of President William Lai (賴清德), the government has managed to harness enormous opportunities from the era of artificial intelligence and expand into more diversified international trade markets in a series of extraordinary economic achievements.
The IMF has projected that Taiwan’s GDP per capita last year might surpass that of Japan and South Korea. Taiwan’s stock market index recently reached a historic high of more than 32,000 points, with a total market capitalization of more than NT$100 trillion (US$3.2 trillion), making it the world’s seventh-largest equity market.
In September 2019, I became a legislator for the New Power Party (NPP). I had already spent more than 30 years working in government, and teaching in universities at home and abroad, with special expertise in industrial economics and regional planning. I worked more than 10 hours every day, reviewing budget bills and proposing new legislation, and therefore have a sound understanding of the professional demands of being a legislator.
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) served alongside me as an NPP legislator at the time. He was highly conscientious in his work, and Huang and I were rated as “outstanding” legislators by Citizen Congress Watch.
Therefore, speaking from an inside standpoint, I wish to use Huang’s stepping down as TPP legislator and caucus whip at the end of last month to expound on the events of the past two years. While the public has been striving to boost the economy, Huang and the blue and white camp legislators have become nothing less than cancerous to national progress.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), as the largest opposition party, has 14 county commissioners and city mayors in total, and holds 52 seats in the legislature. If it were to engage in rational governance, it could conceivably return to central power. Unfortunately, in early 2024, then-KMT chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) chose to appoint the morally compromised Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁), who is frequently seen meeting with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, as caucus whip. The decision was a fatal error for the sound functioning of the party’s caucus.
Fu and his wife have used public resources to service their own interests, employing opportunistic and thuggish tactics in total disregard of the people of Hualien County. By alternating between roles as legislators and county commissioner, they have built an unassailable family dynasty lasting 24 years. During his two years as caucus whip, Fu has not given up on his gangster-esque approach to politics. He has bound national resources to specific regions and groups to shore up support, sacrificing public welfare and national security without so much as a second thought.
Voters originally hoped that, led by Huang, the TPP’s eight legislators would serve as a kind of safety valve to hold the blue and green camps accountable. Instead, after joining the TPP, Huang grew to covet the political machinery of the KMT’s local networks and became driven by ambition for higher office, as seen in his relentless attacks on Lai since joining the party. He began to collaborate with Fu, whom he once despised. With a combined blue-white majority and following Fu’s modus operandi, he worked alongside the KMT legislators he once sought to overthrow, dealing lower blows than ever previously attempted during periods of majority KMT or Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) rule under the administrations of former presidents Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
The blue and white camps’ single-mindedness and abuse of legislative powers to ride roughshod over executive, judicial and supervisory authority has consistently put private interests before that of the public and the nation. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) and the KMT and TPP legislators who have condoned their recklessness are not without blame, and those blue and white camp local leaders and party members who have remained silent are also complicit.
During the first legislative session starting in February 2024, they rushed through unconstitutional power-grabbing bills and willfully paralyzed the Constitutional Court. Amid Huang’s incessant shouting as caucus whip and without proper committee deliberation, various amendments to the Act Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Power (立法院職權行使法) and the Criminal Code to expand their legislative authority were pushed through. This included an amendment to Article 25 of the former, which ruled that government officials may not resist interpellations, and could face criminal charges for doing so. The amendment was later ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. Embittered, they made amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) to raise the quorum for decisionmaking, which worked to strip the court of its ability to keep the executive and legislative branches in check. Twice, the Executive Yuan attempted to nominate perfectly qualified justices so that the court could resume operations, and twice, the KMT shot down all nominees.
Fu and Huang then wreaked havoc during the second budgetary session with deliberate delays and unbridled cuts. Blue and white legislators pressured the Executive Yuan to increase compensation levels for logging bans on indigenous land — so that Fu could shore up indigenous votes — before they would review the budget. After months of delays, excessive cuts were rushed through in the chaotic final few days and nights of the term.
The third session saw Huang focus blindly on defending former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) legal cases and smearing Lai with claims of judicial persecution, stoking hatred and social division. At the same time, the blue and white camps forced through amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法), raising three major concerns. First being the erroneous formulas that have left NT$35 billion to NT$40 billion in centrally allocated tax revenues undistributed. Second, the failure to realign duties with funding levels: Local authorities received increased proportions of tax revenues, but responsibilities and authority remain with the underfunded central government. Finally, revised local-level funding allocation formulas — based on business revenues, population and land area — exacerbated wealth concentration issues and urban-rural disparities. The revisions proposed by the Executive Yuan were completely rejected by the blue and white camp.
In the fourth and most recent session, the blue and white camps refused to schedule a review of the central government budget and special defense budget, while forcing through their own controversial bills. With Han’s acquiescence, and under the leadership of Fu and Huang, they threatened to keep budget review hostage until the Executive Yuan complied with their demands, which included pay raises for specific groups. This contravenes Article 63 of the Constitution as well as the Act Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Power, which grants legislators the power to review, cut and freeze budgets, but not to increase expenditure.
The central budget should be passed at least one month before the new fiscal year begins, usually by late November. However, these legislators have set a tragic new record: Even by the final day of the extended legislative session, Jan. 30, the budget had still not been scheduled for review.
While Huang was serving as an NPP legislator in 2019, the executive branch proposed a special defense budget under the Special Act on the Procurement of Updated Fighter Jets (新式戰機採購特別條例), which was passed on the third reading with support from Huang and the KMT. Today, under even more severe national security threats, blue and white legislators refuse to even schedule the review of defense procurement bills.
While neglecting their legally mandated duties, these legislators have forced through further controversial bills that infringe upon executive authority, including amendments to the Act Governing the Handling of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例), the Satellite Broadcasting Act (衛星廣播電視法) and legislation on legislative assistants’ expenses.
These are salary thieves like never seen before. Each consumes nearly NT$10 million in public resources annually, and they persist in undermining the committee-centered system of the Legislative Yuan by bypassing deliberation and proceeding directly to second readings.
The public must be called on to support the Executive Yuan in taking lawful and constitutional actions to address these controversial bills, and to strongly condemn Huang.
After the Sunflower student movement, it was Huang’s ambition to enter the legislature and expose the backroom dealings by the likes of former KMT and DPP caucus whips Wang Jyn-ping (王金平) and Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘). Yet, during his two years in that very role, he has overseen some of the worst legislative action in history and revealed his true colors as an entirely selfish political operator. Beyond refusing to schedule budget reviews, violating legislative due process, prioritizing personal interest, fomenting division and obsessing over the expansion of his power, he has broadly neglected to propose any constructive legislation to better ordinary people’s lives. He has betrayed his conscience and the trust of voters alike, and is unfit to remain in politics.
Jang Show-ling is an adjunct professor in National Taiwan University’s economics department.
Translated by Gilda Knox Streader
Source: Taipei Times - Editorials 2026/02/13
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