The confrontation between Taiwan's Executive Yuan and Legislative Yuan has escalated further — bad news for political stability, and especially disadvantageous for the KMT-TPP camp seeking to advance legislation.

• Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu singled out the Executive Yuan for repeatedly refusing to countersign bills passed on their third reading, including the Act Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures, the Act on Party Assets, and the Satellite Broadcasting Act, with the latest being the Cable Radio and Television Act and the statute on children and youth savings accounts.
• Han's argument is that however great the power to govern may be, it cannot exceed the Constitution, and the ruling party cannot pick and choose which parts of the five-branch separation of powers to obey.
• Lawyer Huang Di-ying countered that the premier has a duty of loyalty to safeguard the constitutional order, and that refusing to countersign unconstitutional and harmful legislation is a necessary check.
• Huang further pointed out that the KMT-TPP camp holds a majority in the legislature and could file a no-confidence motion at any time to remove the premier, yet does not dare to topple the cabinet — which amounts to conceding that the refusal to countersign is defensible.
• The backdrop to the deadlock is the obstructed functioning of the Control Yuan and the NCC, and the Constitutional Court's suspension of operations for more than a year.

Outlook: As long as the KMT-TPP camp does not move to topple the cabinet and the Executive Yuan does not relent on countersigning, stalled legislation and constitutional disputes will only continue to pile up in the short term.