Taiwanese Constitutional Reform

(Reuters) Tension fills the air as the Taiwanese National Assembly votes on fundamental constitutional change. Well..., maybe not.

Reuters reports:

Taiwan enacted major constitutional reforms on Tuesday that will redraw the political landscape in favor of the two main parties and should assuage China's worries over the island moving toward independence.

The National Assembly, a once-powerful electoral college that once appointed presidents in China and Taiwan, ratified the constitutional amendments that were approved last year by the Legislative Yuan, or parliament.

The assembly abolished itself as part of the reforms.

The national assembly actually is an archaic remnant of the past. It was a holdover from Chaing Kai Chek's old government, delegates to which still claimed to represent mainland constituencies. It's power over time had been eroded and it hasn't met in more than a decade. It was called into session one last time to endorse constitutional reforms that would end its existence.

I guess committing legislative suicide isn't much fun.

Future constitutional amendments must first be approved by the Legislative Yuan and then endorsed by 50 percent of eligible voters in a referendum, a near impossible threshold that analysts say should reassure Beijing that the island will not move toward independence.

See what a massive campaign of military intimidation can accomplish.

The current Taiwanese President, Chen Shui-bian, has campaigned promising eventual independence from the mainland, but that would require a constitutional amendment that now seems impossible to achieve.

One beneficial outcome of the reform cited by analysts is the elimination of splinter parties. The new electoral setup virtually guarantees that Taiwan's two major parties, Chen's independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the main opposition Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT), will have the electoral fields all to themselves. Smaller parties will not be able to compete effectively under the new rules.

The institutionalization of a two party system is widely seen as a way to establish some stability to the Taiwanese legislative process which in the past was plagued by bitter floor fights that sometimes broke out into fisticuffs.

The parliamentary reforms were widely endorsed by Taiwan's 23 million people, who have grown weary of the bitter inter-party disputes that made Taiwan's parliament notorious for fistfights and deadlocked bills since Chen took office in 2000.

The idea was to weed out the more radical troublemakers, so parliament can work more efficiently. But some analysts say ideological differences bar the DPP and anti-Taiwan independence KMT from cooperating, no matter the size of parliament.

Oh yes, the two party system guarantees a genteel atmosphere will prevail -- just as in the U.S. Senate.

Read the whole thing here.