By Yao Meng-chang
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.
Moreover, this has led to people having no way to supervise the voting behavior of lawmakers in the legislative process.
The legislature’s passing of bills in this manner is an insult to legal civilization and harms Taiwan’s democracy.
The majority of legislators mess about like this, leaving legal academics no room to defend them. Painful lessons have been seen in history across the world. In Germany in 1933, the Enabling Act was passed by the Reichstag, allowing Adolf Hitler and his Cabinet to pass laws — even laws that violated the constitution — without the consent of the president or the Reichstag itself.
Passing bad bills allowed Latin America to fall into the chaos of military interference in politics and created failed states in Africa. The widespread violence and chaos created by warlords in the early Republic of China stirred up Japan’s ambitions to invade the country.
Bad laws can bring internal strife and a foreign invasion to a country, damaging the economy, people’s livelihood and rights, and leaving the people in a miserable situation of poverty and even killing.
No legal expert or legislator with any sense of conscience would allow such a thing to happen in Taiwan, unless they want Taiwan to fall into chaos and would rather sacrifice people’s freedom.
The people are the masters of the Constitution, and voters have the right and obligation to defend the constitutional order.
In the face of major legislative flaws in the Legislative Yuan, the people should not only protest solemnly against the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party, but also initiate petitions such as for referendums to correct the errors of the legislature, exercising the rights of initiative to demand that the Legislative Yuan be dissolved and new elections held, or the rights of referendum to abolish the bad laws that restrict people’s right to recall and constitutional remedy. The constituents could also recall lawmakers who enact unconstitutional legislation.
It should be noted that in a representative democratic system, the people are the masters.
The people have the right to reject unconstitutional legislation to protect their rights and interests, and safeguard the integrity and sustainability of a democratic constitutional government.
Taiwan’s pluralistic democracy and rule of law are based on constitutional order.
People are by no means helpless in the face of the evil deeds by politicians who seek to undermine our free lives.
Yao Meng-chang is an assistant professor in Fu Jen Catholic University’s Department of Postgraduate Legal Studies.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
