The Legislative Yuan has held two consecutive days of public hearings on the presidential impeachment case, with a full committee meeting scheduled for next week to invite impeached President Lai Ching-te（賴清德） to explain his actions. Predictably, Lai—who refused to answer questions even during his state of the nation address—will not attend. The session is likely to devolve into partisan confrontation between ruling and opposition lawmakers. While the process may appear futile, it is hardly the “waste of time” Lai claims it to be.
Creating a Congressional Record for History
This marks the first time the Legislative Yuan has formally completed a presidential impeachment proposal through the required co-sponsorship process. Although the current partisan balance makes it impossible to reach the two-thirds threshold needed to send the case to the Constitutional Court, the opposition’s insistence on completing the procedure ensures that the entire process—from public hearings to post–Lunar New Year sessions and a second invitation for the president to explain himself—will become part of the congressional record.
Even if the May 19 vote ultimately fails, the effort serves as a symbolic marker of Lai’s second anniversary in office, documenting how his presidency has coincided with heightened political conflict and social division.
Does such a congressional record matter? Certainly not to Lai himself. Over the past year, he has largely dismissed criticism accusing him of constitutional violations and authoritarian overreach, even as public opposition intensified following the collapse of the recall campaign. Yet congressional records are, by definition, historical records. When future generations assess Taiwan’s presidents, this episode may shape how Lai’s leadership is judged. More importantly, testimony offered by constitutional scholars will stand as a cautionary record, underscoring the enduring importance of restraint in the exercise of political power.
As Chang Ya-chung（張亞中）, president of the Sun Yat-sen School, observed during the hearings, the core issue is one of perspective. If the same actions were taken not by Lai Ching-te but by a Kuomintang president, would the Democratic Progressive Party accept them as constitutional? If the answer is no, then what truly warrants defense is not partisan loyalty, but the constitutional and democratic bottom line.
A Manufactured Constitutional Deadlock
Chang’s challenge goes to the heart of the impeachment case. The Legislative Yuan’s central charge concerns President Lai’s refusal to promulgate the amended Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures, which passed three readings in the legislature and survived an Executive Yuan override attempt. By allowing the premier to withhold countersignature, the administration effectively blocked the law’s promulgation, raising serious constitutional questions.
Had the DPP been in opposition, it might well have been the party proposing such fiscal reforms. It is difficult to imagine the DPP accepting a Kuomintang premier’s refusal to countersign legislation, or a president’s refusal to promulgate laws duly passed by the Legislative Yuan.
The fiscal allocation law is only one example. Few in the DPP would accept a KMT president who promulgated legislation only to see it unilaterally ignored by the premier. Nor would they likely tolerate sweeping recall campaigns targeting opposition legislators, a premier who refuses to resign after repeated override failures, or a Constitutional Court that strips the opposition of legislative authority while operating with incomplete membership.
Chang attended the January 15 impeachment hearing to pose precisely this question: whether the DPP would accept the same conduct if it came from a KMT president.
Power Without Self-Reflection
After consecutive terms in power, the DPP has shown a troubling erosion of political self-restraint. Claims that the recall campaign was a spontaneous, grassroots movement have been contradicted by admissions from Legislative Caucus Whip Ker Chien-ming（柯建銘）, who acknowledged reporting each step to the president. Assertions that the refusal to countersign and promulgate legislation was constitutional strain credulity, particularly given the political reality that such actions would not have occurred without presidential consent.
Under Taiwan’s constitutional framework, a premier who loses an override vote yet refuses both to countersign legislation and to carry out the law has only two legitimate options: resignation or replacement by the president. The administration’s refusal to pursue either course suggests that the so-called “constitutional crisis” is not an accident, but a manufactured stalemate. Maintaining this deadlock serves a political purpose, providing a tool for electoral mobilization and sustained political confrontation.
More troubling still is the rhetorical strategy employed by some DPP figures, who insinuate that opposition concern over impeachment aligns with the interests of Beijing. Such framing effectively casts all political dissent as disloyalty, using accusations of external allegiance to shield the ruling party from scrutiny and accountability.
A Question No Future Candidate Can Avoid
Many of the legislative battles that have defined the past year—over legislative authority, fiscal governance, and impeachment—reflect positions the DPP itself once championed. Former DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang（蘇貞昌） previously outlined clear constitutional justifications for presidential impeachment during the Ma Ying-jeou（馬英九） administration, emphasizing legislative oversight, procedural legitimacy, and the importance of protecting independent judgment through secret ballots. Though that effort never advanced, those same principles are now being invoked by the opposition.
Su once urged Ma not to interfere with impeachment proceedings if he believed himself innocent of constitutional violations. That admonition applies equally to Lai Ching-te today, even if it is now inconvenient to remember.
Asking the DPP to consider whether it would accept identical conduct from a KMT president may be unrealistic for a party accustomed to governing power. Yet the question cannot be avoided. If the president were another DPP figure rather than Lai himself, would the party behave differently? As multiple DPP politicians harbor presidential ambitions, they too must confront this issue.
The true significance of this impeachment case lies not in its likely failure, but in the question it has placed squarely before Taiwan’s political class. No future presidential candidate—regardless of party—will be able to evade it.
Original Article in Chinese （Related： Exclusive | Nobel Laureate Stiglitz Says AI Compensation Is Unavoidable Despite Economic Retaliation Threats ｜ Latest ）
