Analysis: Constitutional Court's Role in Cabinet-Legislature Disputes
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.
REPORTER:
So now the Constitutional Court is entering this role as mediator between the cabinet and the legislature. How do you see it resolving these disputes?
Lev Nachman
NATIONAL TAIWAN UNIVERSITY
So we've never really seen the courts decide that this kind of amendment to be unconstitutional, sort of this late after it passed. So clearly this is a reaction to sort of all the other greater constitutional crises you could say, that are happening all at once. What's interesting, though, is that only five of the eight sitting judges on the Constitutional Court actually endorsed this move.
REPORTER:
What reaction do you think the opposition in the legislature will have to the Premier's new strategy of asking for a constitutional interpretation for these bills that he would like to block?
Lev Nachman
NATIONAL TAIWAN UNIVERSITY
It's also going to be interesting to see the KMT response. They've already proposed a new referendum for next year about whether or not there can be referendums on constitutional rulings. So as a way to try to get civil society, another layer of veto power over the Constitutional Court. Every party is looking for institutional ways to sort of bypass each other's moves in order to find legal mechanisms to proceed with their own party's agenda.
So it's much more democratic, technically speaking, to have the premier request a constitutional decision on a piece of legislation that's controversial than for him to unilaterally refuse to sign it. So obviously, this is what the Premier would have liked to have done from the get go. His initial refusal to sign the tax redistribution law that was passed was was sort of an extreme measure. It would have been probably a healthier discussion about you know, sort of, you know, constitutional crises. If he had waited until the Constitutional Court had decided to unfreeze itself before refusing to sign, because that would have avoided this whole sort of fiasco about the premier refusing to sign.
REPORTER:
Now, another pressing issue is the 2026 general budget, which has been proposed by the cabinet but not yet approved by the legislature and president Lai Ching-te has also been using every single opportunity to urge the opposition in the legislature to pass this budget as soon as possible. Do you see it coming in time for 2026?
Lev Nachman
NATIONAL TAIWAN UNIVERSITY
So problem number one is still that there is no incentive for the KMT and TPP to cooperate with the DPP, especially on matters of budget. And the DPP sort of using the unfreezing of the Constitutional Court to block what the KMT and TPP have passed is going to continue to make the KMT and TPP feel as if they should continue to just block what the DPP wants to do whenever they can. The silver lining is that in Taiwan, if the budget does not pass, it just defaults to last year's budget. So unlike the United States, we're not going to go into shutdown. Instead, we're just going to have a renewal of last year's budget.
