President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) latest nominations for grand justices drew criticism yesterday, as Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators and civic groups questioned not only his right to nominate candidates, but also whether a judge who acquitted him in a corruption case is an appropriate nominee.
“The tenures of grand justices and the president have been designed in such a way so as to avoid having one president recommend candidates for the Council of Grand Justices twice” during his or her term in office, Taiwan Jury Association chairman Cheng Wen-lung (鄭文龍) told a news conference in the legislature yesterday morning.
“After making all these nominations, the Council of Grand Justices would be Ma’s Council of Grand Justices, and we would have an authoritarian constitutional system,” Cheng said.
Photo: Wang Min-wei, Taipei Times
Based on the current system, seven of the 15 grand justices are to serve four years, while the other four would serve eight years to avoid having one president nominate all sitting grand justices, Cheng said.
The candidates have to be confirmed by the legislature.
“Due to the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) boycott of the four nominees made by the previous president, Ma was able to nominate 11 grand justices in 2008,” Cheng said. “If he nominates four more, all 15 of them would be Ma’s nominees.”
DPP Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇) agreed, urging Ma to withdraw his nominations to allow the next president, who is to be elected next year, to do so.
“Otherwise, it would create chaos in society,” she said.
Citizens’ Congress Watch executive director Chang Hung-lin (張宏林) urged legislators to reject the four nominees: lawyer Huang Horng-shya (黃虹霞), Deputy Minister of Justice Wu Chen-huan (吳陳鐶), National Taiwan University law professor Tsai Ming-cheng (蔡明誠) and Shilin District Court President Lin Jyun-yi (林俊益).
Aside from the constitutional issue, DPP Legislator Huang Wei-cher (黃偉哲) questioned Ma’s choice of Lin, a former Supreme Court judge who acquitted Ma of corruption charges in connection with the use of his special allowance during his stint as Taipei mayor.
“It is obvious that Ma is trying to pay Lin back by nominating him as a grand justice,” Huang said.
In response to the criticism, Ma said that it is his constitutional obligation to nominate grand justices when the seats become vacant.
“The president or the legislature would be acting unconstitutionally if we fail to fulfill our constitutional duties,” he said.
Presidential Office spokesperson Charles Chen (陳以信) said the candidates have been recommended by a special review commission, and the president was merely making nominations accordingly.
‘UNFRIENDLY’: Changing the nationality listing of Taiwanese residents to ‘China’ goes against EU foreign policy as well as democratic and human rights principles, MOFA said Taiwan yesterday called on Denmark to correct its designation of the nationality of Taiwanese residents as “China” or face retaliatory measures. The Danish government in 2024 changed the nationality of Taiwanese citizens on their residence permits from “Taiwan” to “China.” The decision goes against EU foreign policy and contravenes democratic and human rights principles, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said. Denmark should present a solution acceptable to Taiwan as soon as possible and correct the erroneous designation to preserve the longstanding friendship between the two nations, Hsiao said. The issue could damage Denmark’s image and business reputation in Taiwan,
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
Taiwan climbed to its highest position in global export rankings in more than three decades last year, buoyed by demand linked to artificial intelligence (AI) that lifted shipments of semiconductors and technology products, Ministry of Finance data released yesterday showed. Taiwan accounted for 2.4 percent of global exports last year, or about US$640 billion, ranking 12th worldwide, the data showed. That was up four places from a year earlier and marked the nation’s best ranking since 1994, the ministry said. Taiwan’s share of global exports rose by 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, the largest increase among major economies, reflecting the nation’s
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
RSS