The Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office on Monday announced that they would not countersign or promulgate the amendments to the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures (財政收支劃分法) passed by the Legislative Yuan — a first in the nation’s history and the ultimate measure the central government could take to counter what it called an unconstitutional legislation.
Since taking office last year, the legislature — dominated by the opposition alliance of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party — has passed or proposed a slew of legislation that has stirred controversy and debate, such as extending legislative powers and decriminalizing embezzlement of assistant fees, triggering criticism of legislators feathering their own nest.
In addition to restricting judicial power and cutting the Control Yuan’s budget to constrain its oversight mechanism, the legislature has aggressively hindered the Executive Yuan’s governance, such as drastically reallocating the government budget and suspending pension reform, as well as blocking the defense budget and proposing allowing Chinese spouses with dual nationality to hold public office.
The amendments to the revenue-sharing act passed last month would force a larger share of the central government revenue to be allocated to local governments. They would also raise total borrowing next fiscal year to NT$560 billion (US$17.8 billion), or 17.1 percent of the total budget, exceeding the statutory debt ceiling of 15 percent. The Executive Yuan had appealed to the legislature to reconsider the legislation, but opposition lawmakers rejected the request. Even an amendment proposed to fix the errors found in the revenue act was disallowed without any discussion.
Even worse, the Constitutional Court has been paralyzed for more than a year, because the opposition has rejected all grand justice nominations and instead enacted a vindictive amendment of the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), proposed after the court ruled that an amendment to massively extend legislative power was unconstitutional. The legislature also increased the quorum required for the court to convene, thus suppressing the Executive Yuan’s right to request constitutional rulings.
As Article 37 of the Constitution states that “the president shall, in accordance with law, promulgate laws and issue mandates with the countersignature of the president of the Executive Yuan or with the countersignatures of both the president of the Executive Yuan and the ministers or chairs of commissions concerned,” President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration could only make an unprecedented decision to refuse to countersign and promulgate controversial amendments — the ultimate measure the administration could take to counter unconstitutional and impracticable legislation.
“The decision aims to safeguard our Constitution,” Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said, adding that it was made to uphold the constitutional principle of the separation of powers, especially between the executive and legislative branches.
The stalemate between the Executive Yuan and the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan has led to a constitutional crisis. It is also a warning how legislative supremacy puts the nation’s stability and security at risk.
It remains to be seen how the opposition parties would respond to the Executive Yuan’s refusal to enact the controversial legislation.
The KMT has denounced an option to initiate a no-confidence vote against the premier, because that could lead to a dissolution of the legislature and new elections, which would derail the opposition’s legislative majority.
There have been calls to resume the operations of the Constitutional Court, which serves as a third party to arbitrate constitutional disputes, but regrettably, with Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) turning down Lai’s invitation to discuss the issues, the opposition has so far shown no good will to help reboot the judicial mechanism in accordance with the Constitution.
More public pressure is needed to urge dialogue between the legislature and Executive Yuan, and to urgently resume the operations of the Constitutional Court to resolve the political deadlock.
The current situation is also a lesson for the public to make wise choices in elections, to achieve a proper balance between political powers, and to uphold constitutional order and a healthy democracy.
