The
Legislative Yuan ( ) is the unicameral legislature
of the Republic of
China
(ROC), which administers Taiwan
, Penghu
, Kinmen
, and
Matsu
Islands
.
The Legislative Yuan is one of the five branches (called 'yuàn',
"courts") of
government stipulated by the
Constitution of
the Republic of China, which follows
Sun
Yat-sen's
Three
Principles of the People. Although sometimes referred to
as a "
parliament," the Legislative Yuan,
under Sun's political theory, is a branch of government, while only
the
National
Assembly of the Republic of China (now abolished), with the
power to amend the constitution and formerly to elect the President
and Vice President, could be considered a parliament. However,
after constitutional amendments effectively transferring almost all
of the National Assembly's powers to the Legislative Yuan in the
late 1990s, it has become more common in Taiwanese newspapers to
refer to the Legislative Yuan as the "parliament" (國會,
guóhuì).
Composition
.JPG%E2%80%8E/180px-Legislative_Yuan_(0212).JPG%E2%80%8E)
Western hall of the Legislative
Yuan
Starting with the
2008 legislative
elections, drastic changes were made to the Legislative Yuan in
accordance with a constitutional amendment passed in 2005. The
Legislative Yuan has 113 members, down from 225. Legislators come
to office through the following ways:
Members serve four-year terms.
Composition of the 7th Legislative Yuan (as of February
1, 2008)
- Central Election Commission (pdf)
- Under New Party direction, all New Party legislators in
the 6th Legislative Yuan had joined the KMT, and New Party members
ran as KMT candidates with New Party endorsement.
- In a pre-election agreement, the Kuomintang and the People
First Party agreed to register most PFP constituency candidates as
KMT candidates, and nominate a common KMT party list, in order to
prevent splitting of the Pan-Blue vote. The PFP holds one
aboriginal seat contested under its own name, five constituency
seats contested under the KMT banner, and three seats within the
KMT party list.
- The NPSU is formally neither part of the Pan-Blue or
Pan-Green coalition, but its members tend to ally themselves with
the pan-Blue coalition, and were endorsed by the KMT in the
election. All members voted for KMT candidate Wang Jin-pyng over DPP candidate Chai Trong-rong for the Legislative Yuan
presidency.
- Chen Fu-hai of
Kinmen, the lone independent elected in this election, is
a former KMT member and endorses the KMT 2008 presidential
campaign. (see here) The Pan-Blue coalition permits
multiple candidates in the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu
where the DPP usually polls in the single digits.
The previous legislature had 225 members. Legislators were elected
in the following ways:
- 168 were elected by popular vote through Single non-transferable vote in
multi-member consistencies
- 41 were elected on the basis of the proportion of nationwide
votes received by participating political parties.
- Eight were allocated for overseas
Chinese and were selected by the parties on the basis of the
proportion of votes received nationwide.
- Eight seats were reserved for the aboriginal populations.
Legislative role and fist fights during parliament session
The Legislative Yuan has the power to pass all ordinary
legislation.
The amount of control the Legislative Yuan
has over the Executive
Yuan
was unclear throughout the 1990s, but a convention
has developed that the Executive Yuan is responsible to the
President of the Republic of China and not the Legislative
Yuan.
Much of the work of the Legislative Yuan is done via legislative
committees, and a common sight on Taiwanese television involves
officials of the executive branch answering extremely hostile
questions from opposition members in committees. In the 1990s,
there were a number of cases of
fist
fights breaking out on the floor, usually triggered by some
perceived unfair procedure ruling, but in recent years, these have
become less common. There was a brawl involving 50 legislators in
January 2007 and an incident involving 40 legislators on 8 May 2007
when a speaker attempted to speak about reconfiguring the Central
Election Committee. It has been alleged that fights are staged and
planned in advance. These antics led the scientific humor magazine
Annals of Improbable
Research to award the Legislative Yuan its
Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 "for
demonstrating that politicians gain more by punching, kicking and
gouging each other than by waging war against other nations."
The other Yuans are authorized to propose legislative bills to the
Legislative Yuan. Legislative bills proposed by the Legislative
Yuan have to be cosigned by a certain number of legislators. Once a
bill reaches the legislature, it is subject to a process of three
readings.
History
The
original Legislative Yuan was formed in the original Capital of
Nanjing
after the completion of the Northern Expedition. Its 51
members were appointed to a term of two years. The 4th Legislative
Yuan under this period had its members expanded to 194, and its
term in office was extended to 14 years because of the
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45).
According to KMT political theory, these first four sessions marked
the period of
political
tutelage.
The current
Constitution of the
Republic of China came into effect on December 25, 1947 and the
first Legislative session convened in Nanking on May 18, 1948 with
760 members. Six preparatory meetings had been held on May 8, 1948
they, during which Dr.
Sun Fo and Mr.
Chen Li-fu were elected President and
Vice President of the body, respectively.
In 1949, the mainland fell to the Communists and the Legislative Yuan
(along with the entire ROC government) was transplanted to Taipei
. On
February 24, 1950, 380 members convened at the Sun Yat-sen Hall in
Taipei.
The first Legislative Yuan was to have been elected for a term of
three years ending in 1951; however, the fall of the Mainland made
it impossible to hold new elections. As a result, the
Judicial Yuan decided that the members of the
Legislative Yuan would continue to hold office until new elections
could be held on the Mainland. In effect, these legislators (and
members of the ruling KMT) held their seats for life, in a
one-party system.
Over the years, deceased members elected on
the mainland were not replaced while additional seats were created
for Taiwan starting
with eleven seats in 1969. Fifty-one new members were
elected to a three-year term in 1972, fifty-two in 1975,
ninety-seven in 1980, ninety-eight in 1983, one hundred in 1986,
and one hundred thirty in 1989. Although the elected members of the
Legislative Yuan did not have the majority to defeat legislation,
they were able to use the Legislature Yuan as a platform to express
political dissent. Until 1991,
opposition parties in Taiwan were formally
illegal. However in the 1970s, candidates to the Legislative Yuan
would run as
Tangwai or outside the party
and in 1985, candidates began to run under the banner of the
Democratic Progressive
Party.
The original members of the Legislative Yuan remained until
December 31, 1991, when as part of subsequent Judicial Yuan ruling,
they were forced to retire and the members elected in 1989 remained
until the 161 members of the Second Legislative Yuan were elected
in December 1992. The third LY, elected in 1995, had 157 members
serving 3-year terms. The fourth LY, elected in 1998, was expanded
to 225 members in part to include legislators from the abolished
provincial legislature of
Taiwan
Province.
The
Legislative Yuan greatly increased its prominence after the
2000 Presidential
elections in Taiwan when the Executive Yuan and presidency was controlled
by the Democratic
Progressive Party while the Legislative Yuan had a large
majority of Kuomintang members.
The legislative elections in late 2001 produced a contentious
situation in which the
pan-blue
coalition has only a thin majority over the governing
pan-green coalition in the legislature ,
making the passage of bills often dependent on the votes of a few
defectors and independents. Because of the party situation there
have been constitutional conflicts between the Legislative Yuan and
the executive branch over the process of appointment for the
premier and whether
the
president has
the power to call a special session.
Amid 70% public support, the Legislative Yuan voted 217-1 on August
23, 2004 for a package of amendments to:
- halve the number of seats from 225 to 113
- switch to a single-member district parallel voting electoral system
- increase the terms of members from 3 to 4 years, to synchronize
the legislative and presidential elections. (It is unclear whether
this will be implemented for the next
presidential and legislative
elections.)
The new electoral system will include 73 plurality seats (one for
each electoral district), 6 seats for
aboriginals, with the remaining 34 seats to
be filled from
party lists. Every
county has a minimum of 1 electoral district, thereby guaranteed at
least one seat in the legislature, while half of the proportionally
represented seats drawn from party lists must be women.
Additionally, the Legislative Yuan proposed to abolish the National
Assembly. Future amendments would still be proposed by the LY by a
three-fourths vote from a quorum of at least three-fourths of all
members of the Legislature. After a mandatory 180-day promulgation
period, the amendment would have to be ratified by an absolute
majority of
all eligible voters of the ROC
irrespective of voter turnout. The latter requirement
would allow a party to kill a referendum proposal by asking that
their voters boycott the vote as was done by the KMT with the
referendums associated with the
2004 Presidential
Election.
A DPP proposal to allow the citizen right to initiate
constitutional referendums was pulled off the table due to a lack
of support. The proposal for a right to initiative was criticized
for dangerously lowering the threshold for considering a
constitutional amendment. Whereas a three-fourth vote of the LY
would require that any proposed constitutional amendment have a
broad political
consensus behind it, a
citizen's initiative would allow a fraction of the electorate to
force a constitutional referendum.
It was feared that allowing this to occur
would result in a referendum on Taiwan independence which would likely
result in a crisis with the People's Republic of China
.
The Legislative Yuan also proposed to give itself the power to
summon the president for an annual "state of the nation" address
and launch a
recall of the president and vice
president (proposed by one fourth and approved by two thirds of the
legislators and be submitted to a nationwide referendum for
approval or rejection by majority vote). The Legislative Yuan will
also have the power to propose the
impeachment of the president or vice president
to the
Council of Grand
Justices.
An
ad hoc National Assembly was
elected and formed in
2005 to ratify the amendments. The downsized Legislative Yuan
took effect after
the 2008
elections.
On July 20, 2007, the Legislative Yuan passed a
Lobbying Act.
See also
References
- "Parliamentary antics said to be staged", Taiwan News
(newspaper), Vol. 58, No. 322, 18 May, 2007, p. 2
- Shih Hsiu-chuan "Taiwan becomes third country to pass Lobbying
Act", Taipei Times, 7/21/2007
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