Judicial watchdog groups yesterday panned the nomination process for the Council of Grand Justices as “severely flawed” and not rigorous enough, calling on the four grand justice candidates to decline their nominations.
The nominees — Chen Be-yue (陳碧玉), Huang Hsi-chun (黃璽君), Lo Chang-fa (羅昌發) and Tang Te-tsung (湯德宗) — were nominated by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) late last month to replace the four incumbent grand justices, whose terms are due to expire at the end of September.
Following the sudden change of grand justice nominee Supreme Court Judge Shao Yen-ling (邵燕玲), who declined Ma’s nomination after a media uproar over her role in a controversial child molestation ruling, Chen also found herself at the center of controversy.
Chen, head of the Judicial Personnel Study Center, once held a US green card during her stint as a Supreme Court judge. Lo, a chair professor at National Taiwan University, at one time had permanent residency in Canada.
“The nominations have betrayed the lack of seriousness that Ma has shown toward the judicial system and judicial reform,” said Liu Ching-yi (劉靜怡), an associate professor of law at National Taiwan University that is a part of the non-profit Taiwan Democracy Watch.
An umbrella organization of seven judicial groups, including the Taiwan Bar Association, has said that it would boycott offering further views on the nominations in a sign of protest.
Chiu Hei-yuan (瞿海源), a research fellow at Academia Sinica that spoke for the umbrella group, said that this would be the first year since 2003 that judicial watchdogs have refused to issue an opinion on the Grand Justice nominations.
“This boycott represents our opinion on the current candidates,” he said, adding that Ma needed to “seriously consider” reopening the entire nomination process.
“It will return some of the respect to the Grand Justice position,” he said.
The list of the four grand justices nominees was sent to the legislature on Wednesday for approval.
A cross-party negotiation initially slated to take place yestersday to discuss the review procedures has been postponed to Monday.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
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