All our parliamentarians should certainly know what the separation of powers is. Their legislative power is to provide checks and balances, so they don't have any right to poke their profit-seeking noses into the negotiations for and conclusion of the ECFA, which, incidentally, isn't a treaty or agreement in the eyes of international law that requires ratification. As a matter of fact, the ECFA, if it is ever signed, doesn't need ratification at all. Mr. Ma has gone on the record by stating there is no timetable for the conclusion of the agreement, albeit he hopes it would be signed in the first half of this year. After it is inked, the agreement can and should go into force in accordance with the Law Governing Relations between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland (of China) Areas.

Well, the act that has a convoluted title stipulates the authorities in charge of executing anything like the ECFA “shall submit the draft agreement to the Executive Yuan for approval before its execution.” The law does not require the Cabinet to make a report before the nation's highest legislative organ prior to negotiations. Like in the case of concluding a treaty, flexibility and confidentiality are left in the hands of the executive authorities. Besides, there is no stipulation requiring an examination or a review by the legislative authorities who have no power to ratify the agreement signed not between two sovereign, independent states.

If its content requires any amendment to laws or any new legislation, according to the act, the executive authorities shall submit the agreement to the Legislative Yuan through the Executive Yuan for consideration within 30 days after the execution of the agreement. Should no amendment be necessary, the agreement should be submitted to the Executive Yuan for approval and to the Legislative Yuan for record, with a confidential procedure if necessary. One more stipulation reads: “If the Legislative Yuan fails to adopt any resolution within one month after the request (for record) during its session, the consent is deemed to be granted.” That means the agreement goes into force automatically.

All this shows Mr. Ma is needlessly buckling under to pressure from the cantankerous opposition. His Kuomintang has a two-thirds majority in the Legislative Yuan, capable of handily brushing aside whatever opposition from DPP lawmakers who frequently label signing the ECFA as a sellout of Taiwan. He doesn't have to pay any attention to their noisy clamor, because whatever he does to improve relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is protested as selling out to China anyway.

We wish Mr. Ma will see to it that the Legislative Yuan does not create any select or special ECFA committee. One very apparent reason is that the committee is unneeded and, worse still, may interfere with the earliest possible conclusion of the agreement, without which Taiwan may be economically marginalized in the emerging free trade zone in Asia.

Another reason is that the committee, if ever created, would make our incompetent parliament even more incompetent. To be exact, the Legislative Yuan might be reduced to a do-nothing parliament or talkfest, the latter word giving the former its etymological origin. Remember what happened on the floor of the Legislative Yuan that continued the beef war across the Pacific? Lawmakers of both the Kuomintang and the opposition ganged up to effectively revoke a protocol signed in good faith between Taipei and Washington on the importation of American beef and beef products that may cause mad cow disease by a one-in-billions chance. Needless to say, the pact does not need ratification by the Legislative Yuan.

One may also question the legality of the committee that is being proposed. Isn't it an encroachment of the legislative power upon the executive power of the administration? Even if the ECFA were a full-fledged treaty under international law, the Legislative Yuan could only ratify or reject it in the due process of law. Lawmakers have nothing to do with the negotiations for and conclusion of any treaty. One example suffices. The U.S. Senate took a vote on November 19, 1919 on ratifying the Treaty of Versailles, and the “nays” won. Brought up for reconsideration next session, it once more failed by a two-thirds majority and on March 19, 1920 the Senate returned it to President Woodrow Wilson with formal notice of inability to ratify. Wilson signed the treaty to end the First World War and create the League of Nations. With the treaty turned down, the United States did not join the League Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations. In case President Ma comes under heavier fire and fails to resist the politicians demanding the creation of the committee, the Council of Grand Justices must be asked to clarify whether it is constitutional or not.