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EDITORIAL: New nominees needed from Ma
By blocking the voting procedure in the legislature’s extraordinary session, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators blocked the nomination of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) Control Yuan nominees. However, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) did not give up, calling a second extraordinary session to guarantee that the Control Yuan nominee list and the act regulating the oversight of cross-strait agreements are passed.
It might not be such a bad thing if the nominations were blocked and the Control Yuan had to close down. During the DPP administration, the KMT blocked then-president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) list of nominees, shutting down the institution for three years without any problems. Why not close it again?
The Control Yuan is inherently flawed. When the Constitution was written, the old censor system was touched up and the ill-defined Control Yuan created, splitting the legislative oversight function in two. This split caused an imbalance in power between the Cabinet and the legislature, for a long time leaving the Cabinet the more powerful of the two.
Control Yuan members are nominated by the president and approved by the legislature. Why would anyone appointed by the president act against his will? The Control Yuan’s power has always been empty, particularly now under Ma. Small wonder, then, that calls for abolishing the institution are growing louder.
The Control Yuan system used to include members with strength of character. The nomination process then deteriorated and was basically used as a means of political patronage, filling the Control Yuan with political hatchet men and obedient yes men. According to public opinion, the current nomination list is the worst in the institution’s history, and even KMT legislators are loath to vote for the nominees. It is not surprising that they let the first extraordinary session come to an end.
The low quality of the nomination lists for the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan is related to the prestige of Ma and his leadership. Whatever he and National Security Council Secretary-General King Pu-tsung (金溥聰) say must be carried out, and now they are using Constitutional Interpretation No. 632 to argue that it was unconstitutional for the DPP to block the vote. The interpretation states: “The Constitution does not allow for the event in which either the president or the Legislative Yuan fails to nominate or consent to the nomination of candidates so that the Control Yuan cannot exercise its power or function, thereby jeopardizing the integrity of the constitutional system.”
However, Ma has been nominating candidates, and the legislature has been reviewing the nominations, both during the ordinary and an extraordinary legislative session, so it would seem that this fulfills the constitutional requirements.
In the past, the KMT blocked Chen’s Control Yuan nominations, saying his approval ratings were too low, so he was not qualified to make the nominations, and that many of the nominations were political patronage appointments. Now Ma’s nomination list is said to be too weak and full of nominations made as political rewards. Even worse, Chen’s approval rating stood at 18 percent, and, while low, it was twice Ma’s 9 percent. If Chen was not qualified to make nominations, neither is Ma.
Looking at these facts, one can only wonder how the KMT will justify its actions.
The best policy would be for Ma to withdraw his nominations and replace them with a list of nominees that satisfies the public and the opposition. The second-best policy would be to let the Control Yuan come to a standstill. That would both spare the nation a lot of problems and save a lot of money. The next-best policy would be to let KMT legislators vote their conscience so that the worst nominations could be eliminated.
The worst policy would be to resort to party discipline and demand that every nominee be approved, setting off all-out war in the legislature and drawing severe criticism from the public.
source: Taipei Times
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