And now for something completely terrifying...

David over at jujuflop has put his finger squarely on a looming constitutional crisis.

Under last year’s constitutional reform, the rules for the next LY have been dramatically altered. There’s a different voting method, the number of legislators has been reduced, and the districts need to be redefined. The details of what the districts are, and how the election should be held thus need to be updated, and voted into law. So, the current laws relating to election are no longer valid and the legislative yuan needs to vote through updates to these laws - but they won’t be able to do this if the legislature has been dissolved. Or in other words, if the legislature were to be dissolved:

Taiwan can’t hold LY elections until the laws are updated, but the laws can’t be updated until the LY elections are held.

What would happen then is anyone’s guess - the legislature would join the Control Yuan and the Examination Yuan in limbo with no obvious solution. The phrase ‘constitutional crisis’ might be a bit of an understatement at that point.

Incidentally, it is the job of the Central Election Committee to propose the new rules and districts for elections. They have (I believe) already done their job - but the Legislature has been too busy fighting and eating proposed legislation to get round to reviewing and voting on the proposals.

Recall that all along the Blue strategy has been to slowly paralyze the government and force the blame onto Chen. Let's see that on the instant replay:

Taiwan can’t hold LY elections until the laws are updated, but the laws can’t be updated until the LY elections are held.

The only question, really, is whether this is the Blue goal: to force the premier to dissolve the legislature, and then totally destroy the government in the ensuing uproar. There was some speculation earlier that the Blue goal was to bring down Su, the Premier, then insert Wang Jing-pyng, the current speaker of the legislature and a longtime KMT heavyweight, into the Permiership in a "coalition government" that would essentially mean the end of any DPP control of the government, then in turn move against Chen and push him out. In other words, the first half of this is already in play, the move against Su. Recall also that the KMT and its allies have already paralyzed the Examination Yuan and the Control Yuan.

So, again, the only question is: is it the Blue goal to get the legislature dissolved and then bring governance on the island to a complete halt? You make the call.

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