President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday promulgated amended legislation that tightens requirements for petitions used to initiate the recall of elected officials, after the Legislative Yuan upheld the bill following a revote requested by the Cabinet last week.
Per Taiwanese law, the amendments is to take effect three days after the promulgation.
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
With the promulgation of the amendments to the Public Officials Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法) passed in December last year, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus secretary-general Wu Szu-yao (吳思瑤) said the party would follow the Constitution to seek a remedy.
The DPP government is preparing to petition the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the amended law, Wu added.
She did not explain how the government would seek such a ruling.
The newly amended Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) mandates that a minimum of 10 justices hear and rule on a case, with an unconstitutional ruling to be supported by at least nine justices.
Currently, the court has only eight Grand Justices, as the Legislative Yuan has declined to approve a new slate of judicial nominations presented by Lai in December.
The DPP government has argued that the amended recall act would "exceedingly restrict" the public's right to recall elected officials and "significantly increase the burden" of local electoral authorities.
The amendments to the act, proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and backed by their counterparts from the smaller opposition Taiwan People's Party (TPP), were passed by a majority of lawmakers.
The newly amended law requires people initiating a recall petition and those who sign up to such an initiative to provide photocopies of their identification cards when submitting petition signatures.
In the past, campaigners only had to present the ID numbers and registered addresses of those endorsing a recall petition to local election commissions, a process critics argued has been abused.
The new law also includes punitive measures, stipulating that anyone found guilty of using someone else's identification or forging an ID for a recall petition may face up to five years in prison or a fine of up to NT$1 million (US$30,520).
After the revisions were passed by the Legislative Yuan on Dec. 20, the Cabinet requested the legislature revote on the amendments based on the provisions of the Constitution, saying it would be difficult to execute.
However, the Legislative Yuan voted on Tuesday last week to uphold the new legislation and sent the legislation to the Presidential Office a day later, paving the path to its promulgation by Lai yesterday.
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