Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) — who once endured the hardship of living under an authoritarian political system and arduously led a quiet revolution — once said: “Democratic issues must be solved with democratic means.” Today, as Taiwanese are faced with the malicious subversion of our country’s democratic constitutional order, we must not panic. Rather, we should start by taking democratic action to rescue the Constitutional Court.

As Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) leads the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) in strangling Taiwan’s judiciary and depriving individuals of the right to recall and development, Taiwanese are filled with anxiety. In response, various countermeasures have been proposed — the Executive Yuan could refuse to countersign, President William Lai (賴清德) could refuse to promulgate the law, a constitutional interpretation could be conducted but not a review, Lai could personally step in to negotiate internal disputes or a mass recall movement could be initiated.

It is hard to imagine that the Legislative Yuan passed three major bills in one day — amendments to the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法), the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) and the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) — amid chaotic clashes.

The legislative process of these three laws violates the spirit of deliberative democracy. Despite having gone through many changes and compromises, the draft bills were hastily passed without discussion and clause-by-clause examination.

Consequently, the legislative intent and purpose — which would be made clear in the discussion during the legislative process — would never be known, causing difficulties in applying, teaching and interpreting the laws.