The Foreigner in Formosa

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…

Dr. Hung in Monday’s China Post:

The new [Taiwanese] legislature will be so dominated by the opposition that it can pass or reject any bill it likes or dislikes.

That doesn’t bode very well for Ma’s bid for the nation’s highest public office.

[…]

A new [Chinese Nationalist Party] premier has to live up to the expectations of the dissatisfied electorate in less than two months before the presidential race takes place.

It’s a mission impossible.

If the [Chinese Nationalist Party] head of government fails, the disgruntled eligible voters will turn against the opposition party.

Honeymoon, doc.  The KMT, like any other party, will be granted a honeymoon.  All they have to do is play it safe for two months, and they’re home free.

Play it safe.  That means no presidential recalls that engender sympathy for the other party.  No matter how good they feel.  Oh, and while you’re at it, you might want to keep champion driver Chui Yi from running down any MORE policemen with his truck, hmmm?

But in all honesty, they don’t really have to be all that conservative.  Doc, your man’s golden.  A shoo-in, as you like to say.  As I wrote in a previous post:

…should the Taiwanese elect a legislature on January 12th composed of a KMT supermajority, they will have instantly rendered their March 20th presidential election an exercise in futility.  Vote for a KMT president, get a KMT president.  Vote for a DPP president – and you AGAIN get a KMT president.  Because the KMT both can and WILL recall that DPP president (and his vice-president) within a very short time after being elected.  Leaving the legislative speaker – a KMT man, of course – to assume the post of president.

Taiwanese opposed to Ma might just as well sit March 20th out, playing mahjong or singing karaoke or stupifying themselves with hard liquor.  ‘Cause after the January 12th fiasco, their vote isn’t worth a damn anymore.  Not a damn.  They could give Ma’s opponent a landslide victory, and it wouldn’t mean a thing.  The wrong guy wins – you recall him.  Or impeach him.  Or failing that, gut the powers of his office, all nice and legal-like. 

(Don’t know if you’ve considered this, but the KMT might even find it useful to have an impotent Hsieh in the presidency.  They’d still have all the power that really counts, while at the same time have the benefit of someone to rail against in the next election!)

From Monday’s Taipei Times:

At a separate setting yesterday, KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) urged party members not to be too excited about the party’s victory in the elections and pledged that the party would not abuse its power as the dominant party in the legislature.

"`Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ The KMT should remember this saying. If we are too arrogant with victory, we will lose the presidential election," Ma said yesterday while visiting the mausoleum of former president Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) in Taoyuan County.

Oh, he does talk the talk, don’t he?  In the immortal words of Ma Ying-jeou – or was it the Amazing Spiderman? – with great power comes great responsibility. And yet, it was barely a day after the KMT’s lop-sided legislative victory that members of the party faithful began contemplating a grab for ever more power:

[Chiang Min-chin, a pro-KMT scholar suggested that the Chinese Nationalist Party] should amend the constitution to impose a proper system of checks and balances on [Taiwanese] presidential powers…

Not too surprising that a party with a two-thirds majority in the legislature would want to castrate the presidency.  But what of the legislature?  Any plans to impose a proper system of checks and balances on THEMSELVES?

Nah, we won’t be doin’ that.

If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.

–Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, Act V

On the heels of the KMT’s massive electoral victory, a bit of not-so-ancient history from Taiwan’s China Post, with a rather startling admission:

With over a two-thirds majority in the new parliament, the [Chinese Nationalist Party] may try to recall President Chen again.  It failed to do so three times in 2006, because it could not muster a two-thirds majority vote.  Chen survived the three recall motions thanks to the solid support of more than one-third of lawmakers in the Legislative Yuan who are DPP lawmakers.

The [Chinese Nationalist Party] has to come up with a better excuse to oust the president, however.  [emphasis added]

Is the China Post now publicly admitting that the KMT resorted to using flimsy excuses in their previous attempts to recall Chen?  Are they really saying that all that huffing and puffing about recalling Chen over the National Unification Council was nothing more than hysterics intended to gin up outrage among KMT true-believers?   That demands for Chen’s recall over his attempted cancellation of a nuclear power plant in 2000 was nothing more than political theater?

Well, those days are over, fellas.  Sure is easy to make irresponsible calls for someone’s head when you know there’s absolutely NO chance of the axe ever falling.  But the KMT’s just been handed a two-thirds legislative majority.  A couple seats shy of three-quarters.  And if Chen’s golden retriever so much as poops on the sidewalk, the KMT can recall him.  So it really is put up or shut up time.

If the KMT truly believes Chen should have been recalled in 2006 (but was only spared because of overzealous partisanship), they should recall him now.  Better that way.  Why do they need NEW excuses?  Aren’t the OLD ones good enough?

Frankly, I’m looking forward to a Chen recall.  Let the Taiwanese understand once and for all the enormity of their decision to grant absolute power to a party that’s so blase’ about overturning the results of past (and by implication, future) elections.  Let ’em know that their decision yesterday has stripped Taiwan of political checks and balances.  Let ’em know that the price of democracy is responsibility for the men you elect.  And let ’em ruefully reflect on this old piece of cynical wisdom:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

-H.L. Mencken

I imagine Taiwanese will be getting it soon.  Good and hard.

UPDATE (Jan 15/08):  Looks like there’s no recall in the works.  Political theater it was:

"We have no plans to depose the president," [KMT presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou] added, as he noted that it would be counterproductive.

Anyone know the result of the Kaohsiung referendum on limiting classroom sizes? 

Sure, it’s understandable that the English papers in Taiwan would discuss how the two national referendums initiated by the major political parties here went down in flames, but it would also be nice to know how a genuine grassroots initiative at the local level fared.

(Mind you, I’m mostly interested in whether it received enough votes to be valid…or whether it was yet another casualty of the KMT’s reprehensible "Boycott all referendums – including our own" campaign.)