Navigating nominee process
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has nominated Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission Commissioner Hsieh Wen-ting (謝文定) for Judicial Yuan president and Judicial Yuan Secretary-General Lin Chin-fang (林錦芳) for vice president.
Tsai’s choices have been met with opposition from judicial reform groups, New Power Party legislators and even some Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, who have hinted they will not vote.
It is important to acknowledge the president’s constitutional power to nominate the top positions in the judiciary.
The government has said on many occasions the nominations have been carefully considered and that it is important to allow the individuals concerned the opportunity to account for themselves.
However, Tsai’s choices are also clearly unpopular and this is unlikely to change.
Coupled with the fact that DPP legislators, when it comes down to it, are likely to vote in accordance with the party line and against the public will, this will be very damaging to Tsai.
It would be a loss of face for Tsai herself to withdraw the nominations. A more viable way is for the nominees to withdraw. However, they will need to be offered a persuasive reason.
DPP legislators should listen to what ordinary Taiwanese are saying and see how damaging this could be for the Tsai administration. They must not merely rubber-stamp the government’s position.
The government should try to keep this in-house. It should talk to Hsieh and Lin, and then conduct a closed-ballot nominal vote so that, if the support is not there, it can reasonably suggest that the two nominees pull out. Then, everybody has a way out and it will solve a major headache for Tsai.
Chen Chi-wen,
New Taipei City
KMT plot in spotlight
There is a plot of land about 2.46 hectares in size around Nanshijiaoshan in the Nanshijao (南勢角) area of New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和) that belonged to the Japanese company Taiwan Ceramics during Japanese colonial era. After the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) came to Taiwan, a munitions factory was built on the site, producing explosives and detonators.
Once, there was a fatal explosion at the factory and area residents, fearful of another explosion, offered no resistance when the government expropriated their property.
Who could have predicted that, in 1959, the KMT government would sell this land on the cheap to Qilu Co of the party’s business operations section at a low price.
In one fell swoop, publicly owned land expropriated from private citizens became a KMT asset.
In 2004 the KMT registered the company under the name Qiyang Developments, a subsidiary of the party’s business operations’ Qilu. The process was complete. The company now completely belonged to the KMT — a gain for the party and a loss for local residents.
Now, legislation for illicitly gained assets of political parties and affiliated organizations has passed the third reading in the legislature. This will be enormously reassuring for the residents of Nanshijiao, who will be hoping that the DPP government will conduct a thorough investigation into this matter. They will want some redress for the land that was expropriated from them and whisked off into the night by the KMT.
Chen Ching-tien
New Taipei City
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