Checking The Legislature’s Power

From Tuesday’s Taiwan News‘ editorial, New legislature must be watched:

While we respect the voters’ decision, we also believe our society must develop effective mechanisms to monitor the functioning of "complete ruling" government led by the KMT president and to successfully check and balance the KMT’s absolute majority in the Legislative Yuan to prevent it from abusing its powers.

[…]

Since the DPP delegation of 27 lawmakers can no longer delay the passage of ill-advised KMT proposed bills, we can expect the KMT’s absolute majority to propose and approve a series of "pork-barrel" laws catering to local financial or other special interests linked with the KMT or its individual lawmakers.

The era of a "legislative monster" is indeed imminent.

[…]

Ultimately, the only alternative force to monitor or check and balance the future KMT legislative monster can only come from Taiwan’s civil society.

A starting point is the formation of the "Citizens Congress Watch" by several civic reform leaders, which last week published a report on the worst 11 legislators rated for attendance in legislative meetings since the new Legislative Yuan took its seats in February.

[…]

If such monitoring can lead to effective boycotts by voters of poorly performing legislators, both the quality of the Legislature and the interests of our society will be advanced.

One other moderating check on KMT legislators that I don’t believe I’ve seen mentioned is the threat they may be recalled.  The Depose Chen campaign of 2006 was the first time we saw this, when the KMT tried to bully Taiwanese independence party legislators by initiating recall petitions in their districts.  (Naturally, the DPP retaliated by trying to recall KMT legislators as well.)

While none of the attempts were followed through to the end, it certainly set a precedent for this in the future. 

Probably won’t see the ball roll on this on a large scale unless there’s some major KMT corruption scandal or the party screws up royally.  Might be a possibility for egregious individual cases, though.