The escalating conflict between Taiwan's Executive Yuan and Legislative Yuan is bad news for the political situation, and it is also raising the tension ahead of the year-end elections.

• The Executive Yuan's refusal to countersign the children and youth account bill passed on its third reading by the Legislative Yuan has set off an exchange of long-distance salvos with Legislative Yuan Speaker Han Kuo-yu.
• Premier Cho Jung-tai first taunted the other side for "not having studied the Constitution properly," then changed his tone the next day, saying he wanted to "stitch up" the distance between the executive and legislative branches.
• Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an criticized the Executive Yuan for saying one thing and doing another, arguing that failing to implement a law already passed is creating a wound and continuing to widen it.
• This constitutional dispute comes just as the countdown to the nine-in-one local elections reaches one hundred days, with the political battles in the two major arenas of New Taipei and Taipei heating up in tandem.

Outlook: The deadlock between the executive and legislative branches will be hard to resolve in the short term, and the dispute over countersigning bills could burn all the way through to the year-end elections.