Taiwan’s political drama is paralysing its government
Tens of tHOUSANDS of people converged on Liberty Square in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, earlier this month. Placards depicted Lai Ching-te, the president, as a horned devil, with the words: “Recall the dictatorial emperor Lai.” The protest is just one act in a political drama that has roiled the island country for weeks.
Mr Lai’s detractors accuse him of persecuting Ko Wen-je, an opposition figure who ran for president last year. Mr Ko, who led the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), was indicted for corruption on December 26th. Though Mr Lai handily beat Mr Ko into third place in the election, Mr Ko had support from younger voters. They claim his indictment puts democratic Taiwan on a path back to its authoritarian era, which ended in the late 1980s. His party has fanned the fears. The divisions threaten to paralyse the government, even as Taiwan’s position in the world becomes more precarious. China grows ever more aggressive, claiming Taiwan as its own. And Donald Trump’s return to power makes Taiwanese wonder whether America really would defend them in the event of an attack.
Though Mr Lai won the presidency, his independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lost the legislative elections held at the same time. The Legislative Yuan, Taiwan’s parliament, is now controlled by the Kuomintang (KMT), which leans towards China, and its smaller ally, Mr Ko’s TPP. The executive and legislature have since been at loggerheads.
Late last month the opposition rammed a number of combative bills through the legislature. One draws the third branch of government into the drama. It requires the 15-member Constitutional Court to have a quorum of ten justices, with at least nine needed to declare any piece of legislation unconstitutional. Mr Lai does not have veto power, but his government can send a bill back to the legislature for reconsideration. On January 10th the Legislative Yuan endorsed the bill for a second time.
Legal scholars think the bill is unconstitutional, not least because it puts the highest court at the mercy of the parliament. Su Yen-tu, a legal scholar at Taipei’s Academia Sinica, a research institution, reckons Mr Lai will ask the Constitutional Court itself, which currently has only eight justices, to make a ruling. Either way, the outcome will be contentious.
And now comes perhaps the most disconcerting development in the stand-off. Just when the government wanted to prove to Mr Trump that America’s ally is doing its bit to bolster its own defences against China, parliament voted just hours after the new president’s inauguration to freeze key parts of Taiwan’s defence budget. The freezes included half of Taiwan’s submarine programme and 30% of its expenditure on military operations. Military analysts insist that much is politics and that more defence spending will eventually be passed. Still, the damage is done. Mr Trump has long complained that Taiwan is freeriding off America’s underwriting of its defence. It is hard to think of a worse way to start off the relationship with the new administration in Washington.
DPP lawmakers have long accused opposition politicians of being in cahoots with China. Undoubtedly China mounts extensive influence operations on the island. But the accusations are without evidence. No matter. China must be gleeful. As Shelley Rigger of Davidson College in North Carolina points out, the chaos in Taipei plays right into the hands of the government in Beijing.■