I don't want to write this thing about the recall

I wonder if this guy is really pan-blue, or just looking to make a buck. I wonder this at every rally, for every party.

I don't have a better title, either. I don't keep a blog because I'm trying to be the news; I'm usually not even trying to be objective. Taiwan is my forever home, or at least I intend for it to be; I have a personal stake in what happens here. 

The recall result is gutting. Not from an analyst's perspective, per se, but from the perspective of a person who calls Taiwan home -- a person who has grown more pro-independence the longer she lives here, and the more history she reads. 

Nobody thought all 24 legislators would be recalled today, but most of us expected it to be anywhere between 4 and 8. Given the hype, the high number of petition signatures, the number of politicians up for recall who'd barely won their seats, and the general distaste for the KMT's recent pro-China actions, this seemed reasonable.

I personally had been hoping it would be Hsu Chia-hsin (徐巧芯), Lo Chi-chiang (羅智強), Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) and Wang Hong-wei (王鴻薇). Not for any strategic reason: there were probably better choices to want recalled than these, who might have flipped a district. I just hate these four on a gut level. 

I didn't want to admit it to myself, but in the weeks leading up to the recall, I'd heard more and more people saying they thought it was too much, or that the DPP had been in power for too long (overriding their previous common-sense that the KMT is dangerously in bed with China). I knew that there were many voters who might not love the KMT, but dislike recalls being used in this way even more. 

It's a fair argument for anyone but the KMT to make -- arguably this isn't the best use of the recall mechanism. It just rankled to hear the KMT make it, seeing as they tried scveral times to use the same mechanism against the DPP. 

I'd hoped that perhaps voters would see beyond this, and understand that at least some of the legislators up for recall deserved to lose office. Hsu, Lo, Fu and Wang, specifically. As a friend noted, the problem here is that not everyone follows politics that closely; we know why they should go, but there are people who genuinely don't remember that Fu, for example, is a criminal, and Wang is a hypocrite.

I'd hoped they'd realize that the KMT's screaming about the DPP being "dictators" and "not democratic" was absolute nonsense, seeing as they were screaming it from the prime rally spot on Ketagalan Boulevard the night before the vote. Dictators don't let the opposition have the best rally position, or any rally at all. I'd hoped they'd realize that this showed the KMT's fundamental unseriousness. 

I was wrong to hope for this. 

I'd hoped that they wouldn't believe the KMT line that the recalls were a DPP-initiated attack. Again, I was wrong to hope for this. The DPP certainly supported it, but they didn't instigate it. A lot of people don't seem to realize this, however -- the KMT framing of the recall worked. Whether or not one agrees that the legislators in question should have been recalled (some should have, others less so), that's a shame. It simply wasn't true. 

Unless the KMT does something to massively screw up in the next few years, today's result may well look bad for the DPP in the next election, even though the DPP weren't the main organizers of the recall initiative. If the KMT is smart, they'll let the voices who don't sound insane take the lead (think: Lu Shiow-yen -- I'd almost certainly hate her as president, but she doesn't sound like a nutter). They already had a good chance to win in 2028. If they do this, they'll have an even better chance. 

In the meantime, the KMT-led legislature has three years to continue undermining Taiwan. Today's win might have given them enough confidence to speed it up. If they win in 2028, there is no obvious way to stop their priming Taiwan for annexation by their good buddies in the CCP.  

With voters seeming a bit sick of having the DPP in power, but no good alternatives that aren't the KMT or their TPP accomplices, there's no obvious way to stand up to the KMT that doesn't necessarily keep the DPP in power. Smaller parties such as the New Power Party, Social Democrats, Green Party and Statebuilding Party have tried and mostly failed to provide non-KMT alternatives to holding the DPP accountable. Many (though not all) of their stars have been recruited into the DPP; great for the party, but not great for building non-KMT choices. 

And can I really hang my hopes on a future-maybe-someday President Miao Poya (苗博雅)? She deserves it and is smart enough for the job, but probably not. 

There aren't very many bright sides, although I am trying to look for them. Unlike the president of the United States, the president of Taiwan isn't a pedophile? I guess that's an upside. 

Can we do better? It's a very good thing that the DPP didn't get to optically involved in the recall campaign. Trying to convince the electorate, already a bit tired of the DPP,  would have been idiotic strategically. The DPP were smart enough to realize that. Good. 

They likely wouldn't have gotten more voters out to support the recall than the activists, who did a great job. At least in my district, you could feel the ire: those recall campaigners were everywhere, even parts of town that didn't really welcome them. I was seeing pro-recall banners in public housing (國宅) typically occupied by the 1949 diaspora and their descendants. The DPP wouldn't have made much headway -- they can barely show their faces there! The KMT regularly holds rallies in public housing courtyards in Da'an; the DPP never, ever does. 

Anyone who truly believed in it would have voted anyway; anyone who didn't wouldn't have. I doubt it would have changed the outcome much; if it had, it would have harmed it. But if they'd been the main instigators or been more obviously involved, it would have been humiliating for them. They'd be on TV bowing and apologizing, rather than making statements that this isn't a defeat or a battle between political parties.

In Da'an, at least, there is a substrate of voters who won't necessarily vote for the KMT -- they regularly elect Miao to the city council and she regularly takes second place -- but would never, ever vote for something promoted by the DPP. There are also KMT voters in Da'an so blue that they're angry about how 'red' Lo Chi-chiang has become. The activists ultimately didn't persuade enough of them, but the DPP wouldn't have stood a chance. 

I'm speaking only of Da'an here, but the same points are likely salient for other districts. The crowd at the rally last night was energized by the fact that this wasn't a DPP-led campaign (it was merely a DPP-supported one). They were singing the anthem of the Sunflowers, not any of the more DPP-coded songs. 

Perhaps I hoped a little too hard that Lo would be ousted because outside the public housing complexes, the area doesn't feel particularly blue. It's important to remember that a lot of the university students who make Da'an interesting aren't registered to vote here. It doesn't matter at all that they're usually not KMT voters.

Another bright spot is that there isn't likely to be another mass recall movement anytime soon. That's not only good because the law isn't well-balanced for what it's meant to achieve, but also because it's so tiring. Voters clearly don't like it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the law was changed yet again (there were changes passed earlier this year). We've now learned it doesn't work in this way, regardless of which party is being targeted, and regardless of who instigates it. 

It doesn't work this way because voters don't want it to work this way. Despite the fact that I desperately wanted the worst KMT legislators kicked out, I suppose that's a win for democracy. Next time someone tells you the DPP is "undemocratic" or "a dictatorship", please remind them of this. 

I know that sounds contradictory: I wanted it to work this time because I specifically dislike many of the people up for recall, but think it's a positive that we're probably done with new recall campaigns for the foreseeable future. Yeah, that's right, I do hold two somewhat-opposing viewpoints in my head at the same time. 

A final bright spot: the KMT probably feels victorious tonight. Sure, okay, they've "earned" it, I guess. Don't forget, however, that tonight only happened because the KMT's own recall initiative against the DPP -- a party-led intiative, unlike this one -- failed miserably. They were the ones who should have been embarrassed, back when it came out that they were putting their own dead moms on the petition. The KMT is unable to feel shame, so they didn't act embarrassed by this, but they should have. 

I don't have much else. This isn't good, and no amount of whiskey, Indian food or looking for brights pots will make it good. 

But it's over, and there are not-terrible things we can say about it. 

There are more recalls coming up in August, but honestly, if Taiwan wasn't willing to oust a convicted frauster, I'm not sure they're going to oust a credibly-accused traitor.

It would be a bad decision to let someone like Ma Wen-chun stay in office, but then it was a bad decision to let a criminal like Fu Kun-chi stay in office. It was a bad idea to elect either of them in the first place. 

But what do I know? I can't vote. I just live here. 

Some rally observations for Total Recall Day

It alternated between drizzling and pouring on Friday night, but I still went with my friend Donovan to check out the two rallies downtown -- the KMT-led anti-recall one on Ketagalan Boulevard, and the pan-green but not quite DPP-led pro-recall one near the Legislative Yuan. 

As you can see, we felt some kind of way about the KMT rally:




The crowd was reasonable, though it didn't appear to attract as many people as the pro-recall rally on Thursday night at the same location. I wasn't able to attend that one due to work. I'm not sure this has any predictive value vis-a-vis the result, though. The pro-recall side is fired up, whereas anti-recall voters might turn out to support their legislature but not necessarily attend a rally. The rally was for the hardcore KMT base. 

The top rally spot of Ketagalan Boulevard and Jingfu Gate is typically given to the opposition the night before any vote, and the ruling party gets it the night before that.

Rally positions technically require an application, and whichever party or group applies first gets the spot. In reality, however, I suppose it would look arrogant for the ruling party (or in this case the pan-green pro-recall movement) to take it, so the opposition always conveniently gets their application in 'first'. 

This seems like a reasonable way to do things, and I would like to once again remind the KMT critics who claim the DPP is anti-democracy that true dictators don't give their opposition the best rally location the night before the election.






While turnout was indeed respectable, especially given the inclement weather, I noted that it was possible to walk around Jingfu Gate. I differentiate good rallies from massive ones by whether or not the gate is approachable. 

During the Sunflowers, I couldn't even approach the gate; we sat somewhere back by the National Concert Hall. For the military conscript mistreatment rally (remember that one?) and the big marriage equality rallies, you could get to the circle but not approach the gate. During the DPP rally before the last election, if you made it to Ketagalan, you weren't able to leave until most of the rally had dispersed.

At this rally, one could walk right up to the gate. It was respectable, nothing more. 



The first speaker that I saw was Ma Ying-jeou, who took the stage well before the more relevant names. The first (or any early) speaking spot at a rally is widely known to be undesireable; to put him on so early bordered on insult. I'm fine with that, but I wonder how Ma feels about it. 

Other speakers included Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an doing his best impression of a real human being. In fact, he wasn't bad -- he showed just a tough of that Han Kuo-yu swagger. Han Kuo-yu got some big cheers; I do see why his charisma appeals to some people. He was a bit more toned down last night, but got the biggest crowd response. 

The rally wasn't the usual KMT oldsters; there were people of all ages, with all kinds of air horns.



We left during Wang Hung-wei's speech; Hsu Chiao-hsin and (I believe Lo Chi-chiang were due to take the stage later. I don't think they put Fu Kun-chi on; he's facing castigation even from within his own party and feels by far to be the most hated of the legislators up for recall. 

He might be toast. Frankly, I hope he is. Dude's a convicted criminal. But Hualien isn't going to swing green, so the best we can hope for is a quieter KMTer taking his place. Unless, of course, there's a split in the party that helps it skip from the KMT's fingers.

Nobody at the KMT rally said anything particularly inspiring or even interesting; there were some TPP flags and other paraphernalia, making the TPP feel even more like a little blue lapdog. 




There was quite a lot of talk about "protecting democracy", and there's an argument to be made that the recall mechanism was never meant to be used this way.

It is a weird argument for the KMT specifically to make, however, they have tried to use the same recall mechanisms against the DPP more than once. If they really believed this mass recall push was undemocratic, they wouldn't have tried the exact same thing multiple times. Unless, of course, democracy only matters when criticizing your opponent. 

Most of the chants were along the lines of "who are the bad people?" "The DPP!" I'm not making this up -- I can't recall the exact language but it was something along the lines of 「最壞的人都是誰？」 / 「民進黨！」-- and all I can say in terms of analysis is that that's pretty dumb.

But here we are, and both parties have now tried to use it as a way to tear each other down. Now that the KMT has realized that its own efforts to use recalls to force out DPPers has very limited success -- hardly any at all, in fact -- but green civic groups (not even the party machine) can use it to astounding effect against the KMT, the law is probably going to be changed once again. 




That is, if the balance in the legislature isn't tipped in a few hours. Let's see. I doubt the DPP is going to gain a long-term majority by winning enough by-elections, but there's a chance, and a pretty fair chance at them having a temporary majority if enough legislators are tossed out.

However, shouting about how recall votes are undemocratic while a few people hold up images of (democratically-elected) President Lai with a Hitler mustache is...perhaps not sending the message they think it is. 




To be honest, it just didn't feel like anything. This is obviously colored by my subjective opinion; I don't care for the KMT. But it was so party-driven, so hollow.  There wasn't any sense of grassroots activism. The messaging wasn't much deeper than "we're the KMT and you're our base, so vote for us". I didn't hear many substantive arguments for their not being in China's pocket, and although they intentionally chose a Taiwanese-speaking emcee who broke out the Hoklo whenever possible, they barely even called Taiwan 'Taiwan'. 

I'm trying to recall if they even called this country a country -- perhaps. The two beers, rain and lady with an airhorn made it hard to follow everything that was said. But it felt more like party loyalty than love for a country. Bo-ring.

Will I attend another KMT rally someday, just to see what it's like? Probably not. I live in a deep blue district. I already know what their supporters are like. We're not similar in values or general worldview. 



I believe in self-determination, and Taiwanese people obviously do not want to be part of the PRC. No KMT shenanigans can change that. I believe Taiwan is a country with a distinct history and culture; the KMT does not. I believe China's actions make it not only untrustworthy, but an enemy of Taiwan. The KMT refuses to see this (though I believe they know it to be true). 

They call the DPP a "dictatorship" when they are the former dictators. They say the DPP is undemocratic even though the DPP has always been democratically elected -- they haven't always been. They call Lai "Hitler" when the KMT was the committer of mass murder; the DPP has never done this. 

I simply see no common ground with the KMT after living here for 19 years. The longer I stay and the more history I read, the stronger that opinion gets. 




A short walk away was the pan-green rally, which had no DPP heavyweights -- an intentional (and smart) choice. This is when it really started pouring, so photography wasn't as easy and I could neither see the stage nor hear the speakers clearly. I wanted to be there to support this side, so I stood grimly under an umbrella as my feet, legs and butt got soaked, but I heard nothing. 

Better music, though. They had some indie rappers, whereas the KMT had...the usual rally background music. They had Robert Tsao (of UMC) but no other big names. 

I know some people still accuse the pro-recall people of being DPP-backed, and the DPP certainly has encouraged and supported them. If this were a party operation, however, this would have felt more like a DPP rally. It simply didn't. It felt like the marriage equality rally, the Sunflowers. In fact, more than once we heard 島嶼天光 (Island Sunrise), the old Sunflower anthem penned by Kaohsiung-based Fire EX (滅火器).

People sang it as we left the rally. They cheered at passing cars (the KMTers did not). Nobody had an air horn, thank goodness. People came up and talked to us (the KMT rally attendees did not, though to be fair, I was wearing a pro-recall hat but nothing indicating my views at the KMT rally). They chanted to take down Fu Kun-chi; there were also anti- Huang Kuo-chang chants even though he's not up for recall. 

Just as the recall activists in Lo Chi-chiang's district are hell-bent on taking him down, the entire pro-recall movement has turned Fu into a villain. 

Well, that's not entirely fair. He turned himself into a villain. The recall activists are just pointing it out. 

The rain got harder, but the people didn't leave. It wasn't as big as the KMT rally, but again, the big Ketagalan pro-recall event was Thursday night, not Friday.

At the tail end, as the crowd left in the direction of Zhongxiao Road, a group of us started singing Island Sunrise again, and you could really feel the emotion when they got to the last line -- the brave Taiwanese (勇敢ㄟ台灣郎) while waiting for the crosswalk signal. 

I haven't felt a lot these weeks. There's a lot, from my sick cat to my stagnant career to...a lot. I've felt a bit directionless, meaningless, my life lacking in impact. I've felt like a wraith. I've asked myself whether I made the right choice to build a life in Taiwan, because I don't know where it's heading anymore. 

I was soaked like a Jane Austen heroine who gets caught in the rain, catches typhus and needs to stay at her love interest's mansion to be bled with leeches, but in that moment I felt like a real person who cared about something. I don't know how long it will last, but at least I felt like I was with people like me and there was, however briefly, meaning in being in Taiwan.

The Roach King is now in charge of handling roach infestations

The hilariously unconstitutional expansion of legislative powers has now passed its third reading under the guidance of a hypocrite, an idiot, and a guy who went to jail for corruption. Seriously, this new legislation is the worst game of fuck marry kill one could ever play. 

Honestly, the best thing I can say about caucus Whip Fu Kun-chi is that despite being a sex pest, it's not even the thing he's most famous for. 

So now Fu, a guy so corrupt his name is actually shorthand for corruption -- is now announcing a task force to root out corruption. And there are still KMT and TPP supporters out there who don't see the problem with that. You can be sure, however, that his new "anti-corruption task force" will only target corruption in the DPP. It certainly can't go after corruption in the KMT or TPP, because the guy leading the task force is also one of the most corrupt people in government. We just put King Roach in charge of roach extermination.

Someone asked me today why the KMT would put someone like Fu in a position of power, if he's so awful. My response was "that's an excellent question, you really should consider why the KMT would do that." 

You could say the same for Han Kuo-yu, the presidential nominee who failed so spectacularly that he couldn't even keep his day job as Kaohsiung mayor afterward, who beat up Chen Shui-bian over a misunderstanding and actually killed a guy.

Indeed, why would the KMT elevate men like this? Why would it encourage them to pass sweeping bills extending the legislature's power? There are many possible answers, and none of them look good for the party.


               

And this is why one should be immediately suspicious of legislation meant to "root out corruption": not because taking measures to stop it are inherently bad or useless, but because such initiatives are so often covers for one political group or party to target another. If it reminds you of Xi Jinping's "anti-corruption campaign", which is barely even a cover for destroying anyone who might challenge his reign...it should. The two share very similar goals, and Fu's announcement only cements that. 

The comparison to China is perhaps apt: the DPP have been accusing the KMT and TPP of passing this legislation as a result of collusion with the CCP. I can't prove that the KMT and TPP have been taking direct orders from China on this specific legislation, but dissidents have said that Chinese agents do attempt to undermine Taiwan's democracy, and one even states that China did in fact plan this, or something like it. 

                   


What's more, KMT lawmakers meet with Chinese officials openly and TPP leaders now lean strongly pro-China, no secrecy involved. Fu's recent trip isn't even close to the first one, and senior KMT leaders such as Ma Ying-jeou pretty openly work with the CCP and against Taiwan's interests. 

Frankly, the only reason I wouldn't call that collusion is because that term carries a strong connotation of secrecy or deception. Is it even collusion if they're not trying to hide it? I think the more appropriate term might actually be "treason", but you can be sure that King Roach's new task force isn't going to do anything about that. 

Some might say that the DPP accusing the KMT of collusion with China is baseless; I strongly disagree. I can't say the extent to which such an accusation would hold up in court, but in terms of saying it out loud, there seems to be plenty of evidence. In fact, I'll say it here: although the specific order to pass this specific bill may not have been directly given, the KMT are indeed colluding with the CCP to undermine Taiwan's democracy, and both the DPP and the protesters are smart to see it for what it is. 

Now that I've let out some of my anger about these developments, and I've finally got some free time after the protests, I wanted to look at some of the accusations flying against the DPP. The first is that they proposed the same legislation in the past, so they have no reason to oppose it now. 

                

As with much disinformation, there is a kernel of truth here (the best fake news is often at least partly correct, complete fabrications are less convincing). The DPP did propose legislative reform in the past, and some of their ideas look similar, at least superficially, to what the KMT just passed. 

Here's where critical thinking comes in, to indicate that there might be some disinformation here: if the proposals were exactly the same, then the KMT passing them now implies that they agreed with the core ideas. So why didn't the KMT accept them when the DPP proposed them in 2012? If the DPP wanted this, why didn't they pass it in the eight years they were in power? And if they still want it, why didn't they support the KMT and TPP in passing it now? 

None of that adds up, therefore, there are most likely differences between the 2012 proposals and the current legislation. 

For one, proposals and actual passed legislation are very different things. Proposals are almost by nature imperfect. They undergo discussion and revision and rarely, if ever, make it to law without major changes. Comparing a proposal to a passed law is at its core disingenuous. It's like comparing a clunky rough draft to a published novel. Higher standards must necessarily apply to the latter. 

You can read some of the pertinent documents in a tweet here. Although I can read Mandarin, my government-ese isn't quite sufficient, so I asked a translator friend to double-check (as I don't want to rely on AI tools for this). They do propose formalizing the legislature's investigative power, and do propose punishments for witnesses who lie or fail to appear. However, they do not appear to me to be exactly the same as what has just passed.

An infographic from the DPP outlines the differences between their proposals and the new legislation:

While it would be better to have this from an unbiased source, this is not bad. And this one I can actually read. It compares the DPP's 2012 proposal with the KMT's new slate of laws. 

The DPP proposal: 
- did not mention 'contempt of the Legislature'

- did not mention 'abusive counter-questioning' (these are both called 'vague' legal concepts)

- does not allow for 'continuous penalty'

The KMT-TPP bill: 
- allows the legislature to decide what constitutes 'contempt' or 'counter-questioning'

- allows the legislature to impose multiple penalties (this means they can penalize a witness with fines or jail time for more than one offense during questioning)

- allows the legislature to decide what is and is not punishable

So far, this is true. Nothing I can find from any of the DPP proposals mentions not allowing counter-questioning (although I've struggled to access the legislature's website recently, forbidding counter-questioning has been a major topic of discussion during these protests). 




In fact, I'd go so far as to say this first section is worse than it sounds. If the legislature gets to decide itself what is and isn't "abusive counter-questioning" and "contempt of the Legislature", and can impose consecutive fines or penalties for these, then does each penalized act count as its own case? If you wish to appeal, does each penalty become its own court case that you then have to fight? 

Because that sure seems like an excellent way to  big down people you simply don't like, even if you lose every case. It also sounds like a fantastic reason to fight this bill, and a major deviation from previous proposals. 

The DPP proposal also: 
- limits the existing 'document access rights' to previous judicial interpretations of the scope of the legislature's power (the constitutional court does outline the limits of the legislature's investigative powers, you can read it for yourself)

The KMT law: 
- expands the legislature's ability to subpoena "government agencies, military units, legal persons, groups, relevant persons in society"

- such power constitutionally belongs to the Control Yuan

This too checks out: the new bill does, from my non-lawyer perspective (again, not a lawyer, don't come at me), violate constitutional interpretation #585 above. It does overlap with the Control Yuan's power, and it's no surprise that now the KMT, which pretends to care ever so much about Sun Yat-sen's vision for the ROC government, is now discussing abolishing the Control Yuan.

The Control Yuan has also issued a statement. From Focus Taiwan: 

In response to the passage of the amendments, the Control Yuan issued a statement stressing that investigative powers are exclusively exercised by the Control Yuan under the Constitution and the expansion of the Legislature's powers violates the separation of powers.

The Control Yuan therefore cannot accept the decision, it said, urging the public to take the issue seriously.

You can read the statement in Mandarin via this tweet.

The KMT has tried to quell rumors that this new law can be used to subpoena just about anyone it wants and then punish them based on, well, vibes. However, that's not what the law actually says -- "relevant persons", "legal persons" -- these basically mean anyone. If you think they mean only government officials, you've gravely misunderstood what has just passed.

                   

The KMT has also tried to insist this is an issue of "balance of power", but it's not really: I haven't heard many people say that the legislative reform is entirely unnecessary. As we can see from the DPP"s 2012 proposal, they're not against it either. The KMT would sorely like you to believe that the DPP simply abhors reform, and wants to continue with its corrupt, violent and dissolute ways, and so doesn't want the legislature to have any real power. But if that were so, why did they previously propose reforms? It's simply not true. 

And as for being corrupt and violent, if you want to compare parties here, I suggest you look at the entire history of the White Terror and tell me which party has inflicted more corruption and violence on Taiwan. Because the party that created a bunch of nationalized industries, appointed their nepo babies and crony mafia buddies to ineptly run them as thinly-disguised money funnels, and then committed decades of mass murder when the people protested it is perhaps the more corrupt and violent party, no?

In fact, the legislator who suffered the worst injuries was Puma Shen of the DPP, and at the protests outside all I see is peaceful demonstrators and highly-organized volunteers and civil society groups. What violence, exactly? 

Does this look violent to you?

According to interpretation #585 above, the legislature does have investigative powers as they relate to its functioning, and which do not overlap with those of the Control Yuan. I personally don't have a fundamental problem with formalizing those powers, as long as they are within the scope of current law and the constitution. 

This is...not that. 

In fact, until recently, I didn't really have an opinion on whether the Control Yuan should continue to exist, but now, the alternative seems far worse. This isn't a balance of powers thing, this simply gives a lot more power to one branch of government. 

Parts of it are, as Frozen Garlic points out, almost certainly unconstitutional. The legislature doesn't have the power to compel the executive branch, so they certainly cannot force the president in for a 'state of the union' followed by questioning. In fact, if they do so, can they then decide that the president is not answering those questions well enough and thus can be held 'in contempt'? Is this an attempt at an end-run around the difficulty in impeaching a president under the ROC system?





I don't entirely agree with Frozen Garlic's assessment -- the existence of the Control Yuan and the exceedingly broad writing of the legislation, especially allowing the legislature to decide what is and is not "contempt" or "counter-questioning" make me extremely wary of the whole thing. But he is right about the balance of power issue, and he's right that if substantive discussion had actually taken place, these issues could have been ironed out. 

He is right, however, that there are a lot of unconstitutional elements of this new legislation. It will surely be challenged on those grounds and much of it will, at least in my estimation, be struck down.

As we can see, the DPP is open to legislative reform. They once proposed it! If their proposals had been given any time at all in these 'discussions', if the bill had been examined more deeply in committee, and if the final version being voted on were more available to legislators and the public alike, perhaps all of thise could have been avoided. 

To be honest, if the DPP had tried to pass a law like this, including the broadly-written clauses that give the legislature essentially White Terror-like powers to go after their political opponents, I would have protested it then, too. Even if I had to do it shoulder-to-shoulder with KMT voters.

So the final question remains: clearly the KMT and TPP wanted this to be a public fight. But why? They must have known that this would arouse such massive discontent, that the outcry would be Sunflower-level huge. They know that while their milkshakes don't bring the protesters to the yard, the DPP can and does.

So why bring that on themselves?

Again, this is an excellent question.