Ke Sun-jyi is a member of the National Assembly, and a professor in the Institute of Public Policy Studies and director of the Electoral Research Center at National Chunghsing University.
FCR: Why did the National Assembly decide to change the impeachment procedures for the president and vice presi dent?
Ke Sun-jyi (柯三吉): In the recently concluded session, the National Assembly transferred the impeachment rights from the Control Yuan to the legislature. Frankly, it is unreasonable for the Control Yuan to have impeachment rights; its members are now nominated by the president, so how can they turn around and impeach the president who nominated them?
At present, the Legislative Yuan is the strongest elected body in the ROC, and it should have the responsibility for overseeing the president and the premier. To reflect the public will, the initiation of impeachment proceedings by the legislature against the president or vice president is now possible. In terms of procedures, impeachment of the president or vice president by the legislature for treason or rebellion shall be initiated upon the proposal of more than one-half of all its members and passed by more than two-thirds of all such members, whereupon it shall be submitted to the National Assembly. Impeachment proceedings must follow this procedure.
Recently, the KMT has had only a fragile majority in the legislature, and in the near-term future it will be difficult for any party to gain an absolute majority. Thus, to impeach the president, the opposition parties would need to join hands and draw in a few KMT members to help. The president must always be aware of the possibility of impeachment. This means that he must be very cautious and consider the will of the public as represented in the legislature, otherwise the legislature can always try to impeach him. He may therefore face more problems than before.
But one may argue that impeachment is less likely because the grounds for impeachment now involve only treason and rebellion, which is different from other democratic nations where bribery and other improper actions can be impeachable offenses. Here we must distinguish between a Western and an Asian nation.
The West has a strong civic culture. If the president is known to take bribes, be corrupt, undertake improper actions, commit treason or rebellion, or violate the Constitution or constitutional orders, he can be impeached. These are all possible grounds for impeachment of the president in democratic Western nations. But we did not include all these grounds in the recent amendments, because after all we are an Asian nation. Our legislative consciousness and our political culture have not reached the level of Western nations. If we rashly include too many grounds for impeachment, it will create problems. In the past we saw legislators against the premier; in the future, it would have been legislators against the president. This would definitely have harmed our nation's stability.
An important feature of the recent constitutional reforms is that they let the president stay above the arena of political strife. In this way he can make disinterested decisions, unaffected by political infighting. But if we rashly included all the previous reasons for impeachment found in the West, it could cause great instability and political crisis. That is why we put in only treason and rebellion. Even with only these two factors, I can tell you that some legislators will still try to find excuses to impeach on these grounds. In other words, our nation is still in a transitional period; we have not yet consolidated our political system. Nevertheless, even though the president may not be easily impeached, it doesn't mean that he can violate laws. The president will still be subject to the law after he leaves office.
Have the latest constitutional revisions increased presidential power?
We must view this question from several angles. First, if we admit that the president is elected by the whole body of citizenry, in both theory and practice we must give him reasonable powers. Otherwise why have a president elected by the whole electorate?
Under the previous Constitution, what powers did the president have? None. He was almost like a figurehead, and that was not reasonable. We are now designing a system that will last. Since we have a popularly elected president, we must give him reasonable powers. No one can disagree with this.
Some people have said it is not right for the president to be able to appoint the premier without the consent of the legislature. But now that the president is popularly elected, is this too much to expect? Not at all, I think. Yet some people say that our government is more of a cabinet system, and the premier is the highest administrative chief of the nation, so how can the president directly appoint any premier as he wishes?
I ask a question in reply: What kind of executive is the president? He is the head of the nation. The premier is the administrative head, but the president is the head of state. The concept of administrative head is obviously smaller than the nation. Since the nation's chief is popularly elected, why can't the president directly appoint a premier to carry out his will?
Therefore, when talking about power, one must view it from the design of the system. In configuring our current political system, we have adopted the good points of the presidential and cabinet systems, as well as some aspects of the French dua-leadership system. Our current system can be called a "semi-presidential" system. Since the premier is appointed by the president, the premier has no electoral foundation. The president does, however, so power should rest with him. If one considers this a cabinet system, then the president truly has increased powers. But if one considers it a semi-presidential system, the powers given to the president are very reasonable--he does not have increased power, but reasonable and appropriate powers that guarantee the ROC president and premier will never again be in conflict.
This new system is compatible with the Chinese cultural characteristic of having a single leadership. We Chinese have not reached the level of sophistication found, for example, in the French dual-leadership system. Some scholars have said that ours is a French system, but it isn't. In the French system, power is sometimes in the hands of the president, sometimes in the hands of the premier. The ROC premier still has plenty of administrative powers, because he is the highest administrator of the nation, but the president has political powers. So if you look at the system from this perspective, you cannot say that our president now has increased power. The term "increased power" is really frightening.
Party-to-party negotiation is an inevitable path in a democracy, and to solve political problems through constitutional amendments is of course inadequate. However, when a nation has reached the stage where it is unable to solve problems through political means, we must resolve them by constitutional change, while simultaneously continuing with party negotiations. After all, this round of constitutional amendments is not final, because we are still in a transitional period.
Some people have expressed concern that the downsizing of the Taiwan provincial government is a sign of Taiwan's move toward independence. What impact do you think the changes in the provincial government will have on cross-strait relations?
There were many reasons for downsizing the provincial government. First, to enhance national competitiveness. For such a small area as Taiwan to have four levels of government is bound to diminish administrative efficiency. It doesn't mean that in the past we had no efficiency, but we now need even more. How is the ROC going to meet the challenge of the new century? All levels of government must increase their efficiency. Not only must the province streamline, the central govern ment must also slim down.
Some people have asked me why we elected the Taiwan provincial governor for one term, then stopped. But if we hadn't stopped the provincial elections, what if the opposition party had won the next gubernatorial election, and won with more votes than President Lee? Wouldn't this have resulted in confrontation? Political instability would immediately arise. Based on this, the timing was right. We could not wait till the second or third round of provincial elections to downsize.
With reference to mainland China's reactions, we only downsized the provincial government--it still has administrative organs, but its size is much reduced and it does not have budgetary and legal powers. So the Chinese mainland cannot say we abolished the province. We have not. This is not a move toward Taiwan independence. That would entail changing the name of the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan, as well as other constitutional changes. We are not moving toward Taiwan independence, but we are trying to raise our government efficiency and national competitiveness. Mainland China has no cause for concern. The people there just don't understand our recent constitutional amendments.
--interview by Jim Hwang
--translated by Francis Li