On Tuesday next week, the Judicial Yuan is to decide whether it would issue a constitutional interpretation for the Act Governing the Settlement of Ill-gotten Properties by Political Parties and Their Affiliate Organizations (政黨及其附隨組織不當取得財產處理條例), following a complaint by the Control Yuan.
Ever since the promulgation of the act, people from the party-state elite and vested interests have said it is unconstitutional, ignoring that the legislation follows Germany’s transitional justice laws.
Even more absurd is the Taipei High Administrative Court judges calling for such a constitutional interpretation, although the request has no merit in terms of democracy and the rule of law.
Leaving aside the issue of the Control Yuan members appointed by former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) submitting this request for a constitutional interpretation in a case that has nothing to do with the powers of Control Yuan members, the Council of Grand Justices must reject the complaint from these party-state Control Yuan members — who are only intended to protect the party assets — because it does not meet procedural requirements.
Even more objectionable, the judges’ call for a constitutional interpretation completely ignores the laws in Germany and other democracies in Europe, as well as those in the US.
They are calling the act unconstitutional without investigating the facts in accordance with the law, which harms the public’s respect for judges.
When Taipei High Administrative Court judges Lee Yu-ching (李玉卿), Chung Chi-wei (鐘啟煒) and Lee Chun-hao (李君豪) submitted their request for a constitutional interpretation, they were of the opinion that addressing the party assets issue only requires a civil lawsuit, fully ignoring that Germany resorted to special legislation to be able to resolve the statute of limitations issue.
Even more absurd, all they had to do was to search the Control Yuan’s verdict database to find out that a simple civil lawsuit would not be sufficient to resolve the party asset issue, which originated during the authoritarian era and whose statute of limitations has already expired.
In addition, a civil verdict states that “based on concerns of legal stability and since the statute of limitations and exclusion periods already have expired, and since it is possible that a third party has obtained the rights, it could in practice be difficult to meet the principles of the rule of law, so it seems that the only feasible way is to create special legislation to make the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] fulfill its duty to return its ill-gotten party assets.”
It is clear that the judges filed the request on the KMT’s behalf without conducting even the most basic research, such as searching previous verdicts.
Even worse, the trio claim that the act is directed at a specific political party, namely the KMT.
This contradicts the facts, as the first party to be fined by the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee was the Democratic Action Party, not the KMT, when it was fined NT$1 million (US$32,762 at the current exchange rate) by the committee in its first administrative fine on April 27.
This could also be easily verified online, but the trio failed their duty to conduct due diligence, which only goes to show that a few judges are making emotional decisions aimed at protecting ill-gotten party assets.
Huang Di-ying is a lawyer and vice chairman of the Taiwan Forever Association.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
The ongoing Iran conflict is putting Taiwan’s energy fragility on full display — the island of 23 million people, home to the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing, is highly dependent on imported oil and gas, especially that from the Middle East. In 2025, 69.6 percent of Taiwan’s crude oil and 38.7 percent of liquified natural gas were sourced from the Middle East. In the same year, 62 percent of crude oil and 34 percent of LNG to Taiwan went through the Strait of Hormuz. Taiwan’s state-run oil company CPC Corp’s benchmark crude oil price (70 percent Dubai, 30 percent Brent)
RSS