Taiwan’s China Post argues the country should have a KMT president, in addition to the KMT-dominated legislature that was recently elected. Relaaax, legislatures don’t need checks and balances. Those inconveniences are just meant to tie PRESIDENTS down:
The belief that there should be checks and balances in a government is based on the idea that various branches of a government, especially the executive, legislative and judiciary branches, should have enough power to control each other.
In actual use, however, the term generally refers to the limits that the legislature and the judiciary put on the executive branch to prevent dictatorship. It is seldom used to describe a situation in which a powerful president is needed to control the legislature. [emphasis added]
Unsurprisingly, this is hogwash. James Madison wrote about EXACTLY this situation in Federalist Paper #47. And in Federalist #48, he quotes another Virginian on the same issue:
The concentrating [of legislative, executive and executive powers] in the same [legislative] hands, is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation, that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it, turn their eyes on the republic of Venice. As little will it avail us, that they are chosen by ourselves. An ELECTIVE DESPOTISM was not the government we fought for… [emphasis added]
(Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, from Federalist Paper #48)
In Taiwan’s case, that might now be revised to read "81 despots". Despots who, within days of being elected, were already being counselled by the party faithful to concentrate executive power into their own hands…