Taiwan’s Legislative Reform: The story of one man’s fight

Tens of thousands of protesters crowded outside Taiwan’s Legislature to show their disapproval for legislative reforms. But it looks like they are going to lose, and Huang Guo-Chang is going to win.

There are many ways to tell the story of the legislative reform package that sparked Friday’s epic clash in the legislature between the minority Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the majority alliance between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan Progressive Party (TPP).

TIME magazine went with “Protests Erupt in Taiwan as China-Leaning Lawmakers Aim to Weaken New President.” Valid! The Formosan Association for Public Affairs published an open letter saying the reforms would “subvert the rule of law and parliamentary procedures, and should be taken in the context of the KMT’s stated objective of undermining good governance.” Well it appears a lot of people certainly think that! For the tens of thousands of protesters who turned up outside of the legislature to decry the reform, it’s a dastardly tale of democracy abrogated.

Tens of thousands of DPP supporters surround the Legislative Yuan to protest the package of legislative reforms proposed by KMT/TPP

I’m going to tell the story a little differently.

I’m not going to talk about the right or wrong of those policies, which would generally give legislatures much stronger rights to compel testimony and punish witnesses who don’t comply.

This is the story of how we got here. It’s so much more complicated — yet simple — than people assume. This is the story of one man: Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislator Huang Guo-Chang.

Sunflower days

Huang during the 2014 Sunflower Protests

Once upon a time there was a young man named Huang Guo-Chang. He came to prominence in the Sunflower student’s movement as a lawyer. Eventually he became a legislator in the New Power Party (NPP), one of Taiwan’s many third parties that eventually faded into irrelevance.

This bit was told to me by a TPP staffer: While Huang was a New Power Party legislator, he became absolutely disgusted with the amount of graft and simple bad governance that pervaded Taiwan’s government machine. As a legislator he could question bureaucrats and ministers in the Legislative Yuan, but he was driven almost insane by their lies and obfuscations. What Huang out of his frustration wanted above anything was greater legislative oversight and to hold bureaucrats accountable. As a part of the New Power Party he pushed for Legislative Reform.

Guess who saw that and thought it was a grand idea? The Democratic Progressive Party! Yes, that‘s right. The very same DPP that is crying bloody murder about legislative reform and how it would destroy democracy was a huge fan of it back when they did not control the executive (before 2016). They pushed bills that are quite similar to what the KMT is pushing now (of course, back then the KMT was in power, so THEY didn’t want the legislative reform.)

Ardent warrior for justice or political turncoat?

People love to say “Huang changed.” People love to say he’s a hypocrite and a backstabbing turncoat because he went from the darling of the Sunflower movement and a member of the pan-green NPP to jumping in with the Taiwan People’s Party and backing them to the hilt, and then cooperating smoothly with the KMT while a part of the TPP. How does a man go from “yellow” to “white” to “blue”? And would he turn red next, they snipe, ignoring the fact that Huang went to bad hard for anti-infiltration laws against CPP influence of Taiwan.

I see something different. Through my work with energy it’s clear that corruption was rotting Taiwan’s solar development from the inside out, but it’s so hard to find the smoking gun. Huang did that. He went after crooked solar property developers like a pitbull and he got the goods on them. He pursued the story over months and months on his streaming channel and took them down hard.

Huang is actually not my favorite guy. There’s something of a Javert about him and he’s always bellowing. But I think he is sincere when it comes to his long quest for legislative reform, which might at long last come to fruition through his skillful collaboration with the KMT, a party many times the size of his TPP. We’ll see of course.

There are serious headwinds against this reform. And I’m not enough of a legislative scholar to know if it is good or bad or what. But I think it’s important to know it didn’t come from nowhere. It came from one man with a mission. And since the KMT have so many more legislators (53) compared to the TPP’s tiny headcount (just 8 legislators), it’s a lot easier to assume the TPP has been absorbed into the KMT. But who’s actually driving this round of legislative agenda? I seems obviously to be Huang, not KMT caucus whip Fu, who is probably more concerned about pork barrel-tastic bills that will take some $$$ back to his native Hualien.

Huang might have betrayed the NPP. Certainly a lot of his Sunflower movement compadres feel betrayed by him. But I don’t think Huang Guo-Chang ever betrayed Huang Guo-Chang. And for better or for worse, he will continue to fight for what he believes brings Taiwan closer to justice.