Taiwan Needs a Green Legislature

By Jerome Keating

WHEN TAIWAN WAS a one-party state dictatorship under the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the power of the country was in its president.

The Legislative Yuan was a rubber stamp body in which each legislator who had been elected back in 1947 was guaranteed his position for life. The only thing legislators had to do was approve what dictator Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and later what his son, former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國), directed.

This all began to change under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) when the "iron rice bowl" legislators who had not yet died had to step down. After 1992 legislators had to run for office and compete with members of other newly allowed parties.

In 1996, another major change happened in Taiwan. The president, like members of the Legislative Yuan, had to be elected by the public. At this point the balance of power in Taiwan began to shift from the presidency to the Legislative Yuan.

This is the way it is today. The legislature creates laws, controls budgets and confirms emergency orders. It can tell the Executive Yuan to change its policies, it can amend the Constitution and it can settle disputes in matters of self-governance of special municipalities, counties, cities and other administrative units. It can also paralyze the country.

The KMT and its pan-blue alliance have always controlled the Legislative Yuan -- from the rubber stamp days of the Chiangs through today. They use it to promote their own agenda and not that of the public. Whatever smoke and mirrors the pan-blue media fabricates to make it seem like today's problems are the result of the presidency, the reality is that the majority of the problems lay at the door of the pan-blue legislature.

One serious problem is the injustice of not having a level playing field for all political parties in Taiwan. The residue of the past one-party state rule is that the KMT still owns the majority of the state assets left over from the Japanese colonial era.

By its own declaration, the KMT admits to resources in excess of US$750 million. This declaration does not include those state assets that have already been siphoned off to the KMT leadership.

All other parties in Taiwan, blue or green, do not have a combined total of US$1 million in assets.

The KMT uses the assets for its own self-aggrandizement and ends: It can out-advertise, out-spend and out-promote any and all of the other parties. This injustice can never be righted as long as the KMT controls the majority in the Legislative Yuan.

The KMT has repeatedly blocked the people of Taiwan from regaining what belongs to them. In the upcoming elections, the KMT is telling its members to boycott a referendum on its ill-gotten assets. The pan-blue dominated legislature must go before Taiwan can be truly democratic.

In addition to a need for justice, the KMT-led pan-blue Legislative Yuan has sabotaged the country, forcing it into paralysis as it strives to regain its lost privilege.

The KMT would rather see Taiwan flounder than lose its legislative privilege and thus its assets and benefits. Even the crass, bottom-line motivation behind the KMT's goal of unification is more because of personal profit than a warped ideology. If the KMT is voted out in Taiwan, ultimately its leaders would gamble they could ingratiate themselves with the controlling cabal of China.

Their hope would be that by offering Taiwan as a sacrificial lamb they would be feted as heroes and allowed to maintain their privilege as governors of the island. Better to be a Puyi governor appointed by China than to continually risk being a loser in a free election in a democratic state. Note the sniveling way that Lien Chan (連戰) and James Soong (宋楚瑜) -- two-time losers and once long-time enemies of the PRC -- went back to China to be feted after they lost in the last presidential election.

Need other examples of the KMT's sabotage? Examine how the do-nothing legislature blocked the country's arms budget for three years and only finally passed it just before last year's session ended.

Rather than see anything positive happen under President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), they prefer to weaken the country, blocking budgets and appointments to the Control Yuan. In this way, the anti-corruption watchdog of the country would be ineffectual.

Look at the legislative elections. The KMT caused an uproar to protest the Central Election Committee (CEC) ruling for a one-step voting procedure. Many suspect the KMT wanted a two-step procedure so that they could measure how effective bribes were concerning the referendum ballots.

If the KMT paid a voter to oppose the referendum for recovering state assets, the best way to know if the person followed through would be to see if he or she picked up the ballot. If people accept a ballot after getting a bribe, the KMT could wonder why they did so. With a ballot in hand, a person could still secretly vote in favor of the referendum.

Facing a confrontation with the CEC and legal action, the KMT finally accepted a compromise, but almost immediately afterwards, the KMT did an about-face and told its constituents to boycott the referendums.

This exposed the KMT's true intent. Their original referendum on rooting out corruption was a smokescreen to match the green referendum on state assets and the KMT abandoned it without compunction.

The ruckus they raised over the voting procedure was a farce. What they were really after was to stop the state assets referendum.

I do not mean to say that green legislators and officials are free of corruption. Many dogs have learned from the wolves and are driven by the same greed and a system of favors that masks corruption. They too must be weeded out.

But first the playing field must be leveled; the state assets must be properly in the hands of the state and not one political party. Taiwan must get rid of politicians who serve their party to the detriment of the nation.

Level the playing field and progress will follow.

Jerome Keating is a Taiwan-based writer.