Three obligations are staring the new Legislature in the face as it undertakes its mission over the next three years.
The ROC's Fourth Legislative Yuan, begun on February 1, affords yet another opportunity to pause and reflect on, if not to marvel at, just how much Taiwan has changed in the past fifty years. The start of the new Legislature also invites us to try to discern whether all of the current talk of reforms that will be effected in the new Legislature is only that--talk--or whether something significant might really happen this time around. In other words, just how much weight should we allow past experience to carry, as we assess the likelihood of the new Legislature's effectiveness? Is the child father to the man?
"How many ideas have there been in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared?" So asks Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov . In Taiwan, the idea of a lawmaking body that truly represented the people of the island and which worked in their best interests was, if not entirely unthinkable, at least something of a pipe-dream even ten years ago. Until its retirement on December 31, 1991, the original Legislature of the Republic of China was perceived by many Taiwan residents to be a den of "old thieves" who had been elected to serve another constituency far away on the Chinese mainland in 1948, prior to the Nationalists' decision to come to Taiwan.
The First Legislature's forty-plus years of tenure had been made possible by the "Temporary Provisions Effective Dur ing the Period of Communist Rebellion," put into effect after the legislators had moved from the mainland to Taiwan. Even when that period officially ended in 1991 (ironically, on May 1, "International Workers Day"), the original legislators clung tenaciously to their positions--as tenaciously, one might say, as they did to the hospital gurneys that shuttled them to their required meetings. It was just over seven years ago that these folks were finally retired. Taiwan's taxpayers footed the bill.
The retirement of the First Legislative Yuan was only one of a handful of symbolic events in the history of the ROC, but it had definite implications for national identity and cross-strait concerns--two of the main issues that subsequently domi nated Taiwan's public political discourses in the 1990s. The Second and Third Legislatures, begun in 1993 and 1996, respec tively, were marked by inefficiency; certain legislators also endeared themselves to people by their violent antics and shout ing matches that were disseminated worldwide, courtesy of (for example) Newsweek magazine, CNN and CBS. Violence in the Legislature subsided only relatively recently. The public was fed up, and the legislators finally got the message: either get to work and behave yourselves, or look for new jobs.
In the closing week of the Third Legislative Yuan's final session, ending on January 15, lawmakers stayed up all night, determined to vote on thirty-nine proposed bills. One parliamentary clerk passed out from exhaustion in the process, but by the end of the final day, twenty-three bills had been passed. Not bad for a day's work--especially when we consider that during the entire previous four-month session, they had passed only forty-three bills. Many of the bills that passed in mid-January had to do with the downsizing of the Taiwan Provincial Government. It was significant that not a single amendment bill related to women's rights was passed, since some legislators chose to boycott. Also significant was the failure of the legislators to pass the long-awaited ROC Immigration Law. That law had been proposed in order to ease residency restrictions on foreign nationals in an effort to bring Taiwan into step with other countries' policies. It seems that the Fourth Legislative Yuan has its work cut out for it.
Three related obligations are staring the new Legislature in the face as it undertakes its mission over the next three years: to cultivate a civil discourse, to nurture a rule of law, and to inculcate a sense of ethical accountability in each of its members. Appeals to these terms have become increasingly conspicuous in official and unofficial discourses on the island; but despite the public's perception of the general inefficiency of the Legislature in recent years, there is some reason to believe that the Legislature might just pull it off this time. Five new parliamentary-reform laws have been designed specifically for this purpose, and if they are indeed enforced by the new Legislature, then there may be hope. If not, then we are back to a general sense of "Well, there's the way things should be , and then there's the way things are."
One of the new reform laws announces a major change in the procedure by which government officials are required to explain policies through interpellation--previously, one of the chief time-consuming activities in the Legislature's day-to-day tasks. Under the new law, in the section reserved for party representatives, the ruling party will not have the right to engage in interpellation, deferring instead to opposition parties. As for the section for individual lawmakers, only the officials concerned need attend. Under past procedures, all Cabinet officials sometimes had to spend as long as two months respond ing to questions. The new law will bring a much-needed sense of accountability to the legislative floor.
But perhaps the most legitimate reason to believe that the Fourth Legislative Yuan will succeed in carrying out its duties in a more professional manner than did its predecessors in the past fifty years is the general climate of expectancy that pervades Taiwan's society these days. The momentum generated by Taiwan's ongoing economic prosperity, the island's increasing visibility in the international community (and that despite official derecognition in the diplomatic world due to Beijing's continuing policy of isolation toward Taiwan), the presence of unblemished young faces in Taiwan's political parties, and the ruling party's apparent willingness to confess the sins it committed during the period of authoritarian rule--all combine to encourage a belief that just about anything (including what is good) can happen in Taiwan as the new century draws nearer.