Analysis: Constitutional Court's Role in Cabinet-Legislature Disputes

TaiwanPlus News

Taiwan's government crisis deepens as the president appears to make a compromise with the legislature, offering to deliver a policy report on a special defense budget he's supporting. Meanwhile, the Cabinet and legislature are at odds with each other and the premier is seeking to consult the now-revived Constitutional Court for answers. TaiwanPlus speaks with National Taiwan University professor Lev Nachman for more.

Transcript

00:00So now the constitutional court is entering this role as mediator between the cabinet

00:05and the legislature. How do you see it resolving these disputes?

00:09So we've never really seen the courts decide that this kind of amendment to be unconstitutional

00:18sort of this late after it passed. So clearly this is a reaction to sort of all the other

00:23greater constitutional crises, you could say, that are happening all at once.

00:28What's interesting, though, is that only five of the eight sitting judges on the constitutional

00:34court actually endorsed this move. So what's also going to be interesting is whether or not

00:44if these three judges who did not endorse this move will actually continue to go along with this

00:51unfreezing, because even though they have formally unfrozen themselves as best as they possibly

00:59can right now.

01:00What reaction do you think the opposition in the legislature will have to the premier's

01:06new strategy of asking for a constitutional interpretation for these bills that he would

01:11like to block?

01:12It also is going to be interesting to see the KMT's response. They've already proposed a new

01:17referendum for next year about whether or not there can be referendums on constitutional

01:22rulings. So as a way to try to get civil society another layer of veto power over the constitutional

01:29court. Every party is looking for institutional ways to sort of bypass each other's moves in

01:35order to find mechanisms, legal mechanisms to sort of stop or proceed with their own party's

01:43agenda. So it's much more democratic, technically speaking, to have the premier request a constitutional

01:51decision on a piece of legislation that's controversial than for him to unilaterally refuse to sign it.

02:00So obviously this is what the premier would have liked to have done from the get-go. His initial

02:05refusal to sign the tax redistribution law that was passed was sort of an extreme measure.

02:13It would have been probably a healthier discussion about, you know, sort of constitutional crises if

02:23he had waited until the constitutional court had decided to unfreeze itself before refusing to sign

02:28because that would have avoided this whole sort of fiasco about the premier refusing to sign.

02:33Now, another pressing issue is the 2026 general budget, which has been proposed by the cabinet,

02:37but not yet approved by the legislature. And President Lai Chinta has also been using every

02:42single opportunity to urge the opposition in the legislature to pass this budget as soon as

02:48possible. Do you see it coming in time for 2026?

02:52So problem number one is still that there is no incentive for the KMT and TPP to cooperate with

02:58the DPP, especially on matters of budget. And the DPP sort of using the unfreezing of the constitutional

03:07court to block what the KMT and TPP have passed is going to continue to make the KMT and TPP feel as

03:16if they should continue to just block what the DPP wants to do whenever they can. The silver lining

03:21is that in Taiwan, if the budget does not pass, it just defaults to last year's budget. So unlike the

03:27United States, we're not going to go into shutdown. Instead, we're just going to have a renewal of last

03:32year's budget.

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