The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus has suggested reinstating the Ministry of Justice’s Special Investigation Division (SID) and pushing for reforms such as the introduction of legislative investigative powers. Is there really a need to reinstate the SID, which was abolished back in 2016?
During the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration in 2006, Article 63-1 was added to the Court Organization Act (法院組織法) to establish the SID under the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, to investigate corruption and negligence of duties by officials, as well as major economic or social crimes.
Meanwhile, the procurator-general was nominated by the president and approved by the legislature for a non-renewable term of four years to maintain the independence of prosecutorial power from outside interference.
After the establishment of the SID, since its main targets of investigation were high-level civil servants such as the president and vice president, any action would always give rise to political associations.
After the power transfer in 2008, despite the fact that the SID’s targets included people from both the blue and green camps, the majority of prosecutions were still against officials of the former DPP administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), including the former president, and even now, there are still some cases being tried in court.
How many of the cases are guilty and how many are not guilty?
Then-prosecutor-general Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) went so far as to report to then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) the content of the wiretapping of then-legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) in 2013 without having yet concluded the investigation.
Huang not only contravened the principle of confidentiality in investigations, but also allowed the political weaponization of the SID. Therefore, after another power transfer in 2016, the legislature amended the Court Organization Act to abolish the SID, officially consigning it to history.
In the past, the number of prosecutors in the SID was legally restricted to 15, so it often had to borrow prosecutors from prosecutors’ offices at all levels. However, the Court Organization Act did not expand the prosecutorial powers of the SID and there was no difference in the authority between the SID prosecutors and regular prosecutors.
Trying to eradicate corruption in public service just by upgrading the organizational level of a unit would be oversimplifying the problem, and would cause the prosecution system to be caught in a whirlpool of political disputes, which would damage its credibility.
The problem lies not in whether to reinstate the SID, but in how to ensure the neutrality and objectivity of prosecutors, as well as the professional division of labor and effective allocation of resources within all prosecutors’ offices.
In particular, prosecutors’ offices nationwide are being overwhelmed just by handling fraud cases, and the number of prosecutors who are mentally and physically exhausted and might opt for early retirement is gradually increasing. So how to prevent this loss of talent is a more important and urgent task.
The chapter on the procuratorate in the Court Organization Act is outdated and lawmakers should promptly introduce a separate bill on the procuratorate after comprehensively reviewing the various problems of the existing prosecutorial system.
Wu Ching-chin is a professor in Aletheia University’s Department of Law and director of the university’s Criminal Law Research Center.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry gives it a strategic advantage, but that advantage would be threatened as the US seeks to end Taiwan’s monopoly in the industry and as China grows more assertive, analysts said at a security dialogue last week. While the semiconductor industry is Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” its dominance has been seen by some in the US as “a monopoly,” South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University academic Kwon Seok-joon said at an event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In addition, Taiwan lacks sufficient energy sources and is vulnerable to natural disasters and geopolitical threats from China, he said.
After reading the article by Hideki Nagayama [English version on same page] published in the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) on Wednesday, I decided to write this article in hopes of ever so slightly easing my depression. In August, I visited the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, to attend a seminar. While there, I had the chance to look at the museum’s collections. I felt extreme annoyance at seeing that the museum had classified Taiwanese indigenous peoples as part of China’s ethnic minorities. I kept thinking about how I could make this known, but after returning
What value does the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hold in Taiwan? One might say that it is to defend — or at the very least, maintain — truly “blue” qualities. To be truly “blue” — without impurities, rejecting any “red” influence — is to uphold the ideology consistent with that on which the Republic of China (ROC) was established. The KMT would likely not object to this notion. However, if the current generation of KMT political elites do not understand what it means to be “blue” — or even light blue — their knowledge and bravery are far too lacking
Taipei’s population is estimated to drop below 2.5 million by the end of this month — the only city among the nation’s six special municipalities that has more people moving out than moving in this year. A city that is classified as a special municipality can have three deputy mayors if it has a population of more than 2.5 million people, Article 55 of the Local Government Act (地方制度法) states. To counter the capital’s shrinking population, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) held a cross-departmental population policy committee meeting on Wednesday last week to discuss possible solutions. According to Taipei City Government data, Taipei’s