GEIS-新闻详情

Beijing-friendly Han Kuo-yu elected speaker of Taiwan’s legislature

2024-02-01 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-亚洲原网页

TAIPEI – The protests began even before the Beijing-friendly former Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu was elected Taiwan’s new legislative Speaker.

Hours before the vote started on Feb 1, dozens of young Taiwanese held banners outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei and shouted: “We reject China’s choice.” Some scaled the walls surrounding the building before they were stopped by the police.

With Mr Han of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) now sworn in as Speaker, Taiwan’s President-elect Lai Ching-te of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will face challenges in setting the island’s direction.

By law, the Speaker must remain neutral in Parliament, but he will set the agenda in the legislature, which controls spending.

Analysts say there are implications for how cross-strait dynamics and Taiwan’s parliamentary diplomacy would play out amid the island’s diplomatic isolation.

Besides the routine duty of chairing legislative proceedings, the Speaker has the important role of expanding the island’s international outreach through parliamentary cooperation – deemed necessary given the sensitivities surrounding Taipei’s political status.

“Through parliamentary diplomacy, Taiwan has been deepening ties with democratic partners (and others) that share similar values,” former Speaker You Si-kun of the ruling DPP told Nikkei Asia, in an interview days before he lost the role.

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“We have broken China’s diplomatic blockade,” he added in the report published on Jan 26.

China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, and has stepped up pressure in recent years to isolate Taipei internationally.

Despite having only 12 official diplomatic allies, Taiwan has strengthened its informal relations with like-minded democracies through parliamentary exchanges, which are seen as less official than if they were carried out by the executive branch.

“As legislative Speaker, You has had meetings in Europe, Japan and the US, and he has also welcomed legislators from other countries to Taiwan. If he had retained the position, we would see more of the same,” said Associate Professor Chen Shih-min, a political scientist from National Taiwan University.

“But it’s less clear about the direction that Han will take, especially given his Beijing-friendly stance.”

Mr Han, 66, was widely tipped to become Speaker after the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) made the surprise announcement one day before the vote that it would be fielding its own candidate for the post, instead of rallying its eight legislators to support either of the two main political parties.

Given how the KMT is the largest party in the 113-seat legislature with 52 seats to the DPP’s 51 – it was anticipated that the former mayor would beat Mr You as long as every voter cast their ballot along party lines. The final two legislative seats are held by independents ideologically aligned with the KMT.

Mr Han Kuo-yu (centre), the newly elected Parliament speaker from Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Kuomintang, greeting the media in Taipei on Feb 1. PHOTO: REUTERS

Mr Han was confirmed in the role after he secured 54 votes in a second round of voting, which is based on a plurality. All eight members of the TPP had abstained then. No one had emerged the winner in the first round, which required an absolute majority of at least 57 votes.

A big concern among Mr Han’s critics is that his Beijing-friendly leanings would make him vulnerable to China’s pressure to do its bidding.

For one thing, that could mean fewer parliamentary exchanges with other like-minded democracies, given that these are frowned upon by China, experts said.

Mr Han has repeatedly endorsed the 1992 Consensus – a tacit agreement that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to “one China”, with each side having its own interpretation of what that meant.