Tension rose once again this week between China and Taiwan, after Thursday's announcement of a first official trip abroad for Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, including two stopovers in American territory. One in Hawaii. The other on the island of Guam.
For Beijing, the route is a “bad signal” sent by Washington “to the separatist forces” of Taiwan, an autonomous territory governed democratically since the 1990s, supported by the United States, but which China claims as one of its provinces. It systematically attacks any sign of its diplomatic autonomy.
And the revolt should accentuate the persistent threat of the Chinese dictatorship on the island with military maneuvers which are increasing above the Taiwan Strait and, since the beginning of the year, an asset for Beijing in its strategy of resuming the territory: political allies coming from within.
Two pro-Chinese political parties are now in control of Taiwan's legislative apparatus. A game of power in a normal democracy, but which, on this Asian territory, now poses the risk of a “Hong Kong-style” scenario, where democracy slowly collapsed, from 2014, under the effect of increasingly repressive legislative reforms.
“This is what we fear here,” says Paul Jobin, sociologist at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan, during a video conference, joined this week in Taipei. “Some of my colleagues are talking about a parliamentary coup and a parliamentary dictatorship being established. Clearly, we are in the heart of a constitutional crisis with a body of evidence and signs that speak for themselves about Chinese interference in Taiwan's political affairs. »
At the end of October, the Constitutional Court of Taiwan, one of the guardians of democratic order on the island, repelled an initial attack by invalidating a series of measures aimed at strengthening legislative powers, to facilitate the targeting and persecution of citizens, of civil servants, business leaders or military personnel in the context of political interrogations carried out within parliamentary commissions of inquiry. The deputies also wanted to gain ascendancy over the executive with a law submitting the presidency to Parliament and thus calling into question the separation of powers in Taiwan.
These reforms were led by the Kuomintang (KMT), a pro-Chinese party which, with the support of the Taiwan People's Party (PPT), a political group calling for a rapprochement of the island with Beijing, now forms the majority camp in Parliament. The executive is still in the hands of the pro-Western and sovereignist Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), whose arrival in power in 2016 irritated the Chinese dictatorship and brought into the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China in a logic of acute tension. The election of Lai Ching-te earlier this year only amplified the acrimony.
Last spring, after a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the former president of the KMT, Ma Ying-jeou, called through his foundation to modify the “anti-infiltration law”, which prevents Chinese interference in Taiwan's policies. Eric Chu, the current president of the pro-China party, has embraced the approach.
A few days ago, one of his deputies submitted a bill aimed at allowing the military and key government officials to salute the Chinese national flag, sing the Chinese national anthem and commit in actions recognizing the political authority of the Beijing government. A legal framework seeking above all “to sell Taiwan to China” and to “remove the laws protecting national sovereignty” of the island, denounced two elected officials of the PDP, in power, cited by the Taipei News.
Unhealthy climate
“It’s very worrying for democracy in Taiwan,” says Paul Jobin. Especially when we see what is happening elsewhere in the world, in Georgia [où la montée d’un parti prorusse a sapé les ambitions pro-européennes de ce pays du Caucase]with the rise of the far right and anti-democratic leaders in Europe, the United States… The global climate is increasingly unhealthy. The background of the air is no longer just red, it is rather fascist. »
On November 16, around a hundred lawyers from Taiwan marched through the streets of Taipei, the capital, to demand the withdrawal of a bill brought by the pro-Chinese majority in Parliament to review the law governing the Court's procedures. constitutional. This reform seeks to impose decision-making by two-thirds of the votes, rather than a simple majority, within the government body, a way of reducing the influence of this court which has just put a spoke in the wheels of the KMT and the TPP, denounce the Taiwanese pro-democracy voices.
Pro-Beijing deputies could also take advantage of their majority to paralyze the institution, of which 8 of the 15 judges must be renewed in the coming months, under the Constitution.
“This is not just a disagreement between the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and the KMT in the Legislative Assembly, but an issue that affects the constitutional system of our country,” the lawyer summed up. Hong Wei-sheng, quoted by the Taiwanese news agency CNA.
This week, a small group of citizens gathered in front of Taiwan's parliament to draw attention to the threat posed by this pro-Chinese majority within the legislative power to Taiwan's young democracy. Last May, thousands of Democrats took to the streets to express their concern, but the movement has since lost energy, says Paul Jobin.
“The feeling of urgency and crisis is not easy to stimulate in the face of questions of constitutional rights which are not easy to popularize,” explains the sociologist, specialist in Taiwanese social movements. The KMT and the TPP know this very well and they are not going to stop their attack on Taiwan's democratic system, with three more years to continue to drag us towards the worst. »
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