EDITORIAL: Budget’s passage very unimpressive

The Legislative Yuan on Friday finally passed the long-delayed third reading of this year’s central government general budget, setting a new record for the tardiest passage of a general budget — delayed 266 days past the legal deadline, almost running headlong into the next year’s proposed general budget, typically submitted for review before September.

It passed with an overall NT$48 billion (US$1.54 billion) cut across agencies and freezes in spending, including the premier’s salary. It also contained a dramatic twist as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) suddenly withdrew its proposal to cut the Executive Yuan’s entire six-year, NT$44.2 billion Uncrewed Vehicle Industry Development Program along with other agencies’ drone procurement funding, allowing them to pass. The result drew mixed responses.

The KMT hailed its “compromise” as a gesture of “great goodwill” and claimed it supports domestic drone industry development by passing the funding. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and government officials expressed concern over deep cuts and freezes in funding that might critically affect agencies’ operations, as well as over the special budget bill for funding military drones still being blocked by opposition lawmakers.

According to the Budget Act (預算法), the Legislative Yuan should have approved the Executive Yuan’s general budget proposal “a month before the beginning of a new fiscal year,” meaning the review deadline should have been the end of November last year. Local media said that the opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan had strung the budget review along for 350 days since the Cabinet submitted the proposed budget to the legislature last year.

Finally passing the general budget should be good news, even though it happened almost two-thirds of the way through the fiscal year, but opposition lawmakers do not deserve praise for their abrogation of duty or their self-proclaimed “leniency.” Scrutiny on legislators should be increased to hold them accountable.

The KMT, on the last day of the budget review, abruptly withdrew its objections and approved the government’s proposed NT$6.34 billion budget for domestic drone development — as well as the NT$44.2 billion industry development budget overseen by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the NT$19.2 billion budget for various agencies’ drone procurement.

The KMT claimed it was because it “strongly supports Taiwan’s security and the autonomous development of its defense industry,” but the sudden reversal of this important bill highlights the sloppiness and inconsistency of its decisionmaking.

The hasty decision validates speculation that the opposition’s cuts and freezes were not ever based on rational or professional oversight, but were made for political maneuvering and retaliation, with the ultimate goal of disrupting and paralyzing the smooth operation of the government. It is underpinned by the same “cut-and-paste” methods that KMT lawmakers have used to gut funding across government agencies, highlighting their laziness in even pretending to perform their duty reviewing the agency budgets in detail.

The opposition lawmakers’ efforts to disrupt the government’s operation have been a recurring theme since they took up their posts two years ago, demonstrated by their efforts to paralyze the Constitutional Court after it found their legislative power expansion bills unconstitutional, hamstring last year’s budget, and reject almost all judicial nominees, Control Yuan members and agencies that perform public oversight on legislators or on political parties.

During the rushed passage of the general budget last week, the KMT lawmakers’ decisionmaking mechanism raises more serious concerns.

Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT lost his temper in a cross-caucus negotiation on Tuesday last week, saying that KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi should either attend the meetings, authorize his colleagues to represent him or resign from his position. It shows that only a few lawmakers, or possibly only Fu, are calling the shots, while other lawmakers are acting as “rubber stamps,” passively obeying the caucus’ decisions, even if they say they are voting based on their conscience or rationality. For example, KMT Legislator Ko Chih-en (柯志恩) expressed her concerns in interviews that cutting the premier’s salary might be against the law, but she still complied with her party’s proposal when it came to a vote.

The political farce carried out by KMT-led lawmakers in the past week vindicates the author of a widely discussed article, “Taking Taiwan’s Democracy Hostage,” in The Economist last week. He said that “a bunch of deeply unimpressive politicians are paralyzing Taiwan’s democracy for shameful, self-interested reasons” and the “KMT-led opposition antics are holding Taiwan politics hostage,” while the only beneficiary is China.