The article "Parliamentary Funk" published on Foreign Policy in July 2011 commented on the parliamentary performance of my country in the eight years of divided government from 2000 to 2008. According to the constitutional systems, once a divided government appears, comparing with a unified government, more policy competitions among major political parties are always observed. It is a possible phenomenon of mutual check and balance between the parliament and the administration in democratic countries which adopt the concept of separation of governmental powers. The situation is not exclusive to Taiwan. However, it will be a misunderstanding if we say that the political parties in Taiwan's parliament could not cooperate at all. From the observations of caucuses' relationship in our parliament since 1992, we can see collaboration, competition, and conflicts resulted from crucial political ideological disagreements. Therefore, Taiwan's parliament is often misunderstood as a "fighting arena".
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In fact, the developments of Taiwan's parliament in the past 20 years are worth high attention. In addition to the approval of annual budgets and important bills related to people's livelihood, the collaboration between the political parties facilitated several vital reforms. That includes relevant constitutional amendments and legislative works for the following achievements: the launch of direct popular presidential elections, the cut of legislative seats into half, the adoption of single-district, two-vote system in legislative elections, and the review of modi?cations to the organization of the Executive Yuan. It is difficult for others to accomplish similar democratic reforms within such limited time.
Even in divided government period, through the mechanism of inter-caucus negotiations, from the perspective of national interests and people's interests, the parliament rendered its utmost support to the administration so the administration was able to advance all necessary annual budgets and important bills. Those bills include Provisional Statute for 921 Earthquake Post-Disaster Reconstruction and Special Budget, Statute for the Establishment and Administration of the Financial Restructuring Fund and Budget, Special Statute for the Management of Keelung River Basin and Special Budget, Provisional Statute for the Expansion of Employment Through the Development of Public Services and Extra Budget, Provisional Statute for Infrastructure Expansion and Economic Revitalization and Extra Budget, Provisional Statue for the Prevention and Relief of SARS and Special Budget, Special Statute for Investment in infrastructure Expansion and Special Budget. Based on the statistics, in divided government period, our parliament approved 500 to 650 bills every term (3 years) which is not less than other parliaments. With regard to the recall against President Chen Shui-Bian then proposed by the opposition party, the main reason is still the First Family's possible involvement in corruption cases instead of a disagreement over administration's energy policy.
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