Pan-green parties yesterday announced they had launched an effort to impeach President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) over what they claim are policies that are detrimental to the country’s welfare, sparking accusations of troublemaking from the pan-blue camp.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) announced that the DPP and the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) had initiated the process against Ma, which will unfold just days before his first term comes to a close and he is inaugurated for a second term.
The DPP and the TSU caucuses told a press conference at the legislature that the impeachment motion would be processed by the legislature’s Procedure Committee today, the last chance for the legislature to review the impeachment before Ma’s first term ends on Saturday.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
According to Article 2 of the Constitution, impeachment of the president or vice president must be proposed by one-fourth of all legislators and raised in the legislative session after being ratified by two-thirds of legislators, after which the proposal has to be voted on by everyone eligible to vote in “the liberated area of the Republic of China [ROC].”
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) holds 64 seats in the legislature, against the DPP’s 40 and three each for the People First Party (PFP) and the TSU, with the remaining seats held by independents.
The impeachment would be valid if half of the total eligible population voted in its favor.
The current high threshold for impeaching a president serves as a safety net for presidents with consecutive terms in office and is detrimental to the country’s democratic process, Ker said.
“Since his election in 2008, Ma’s popularity has fallen to 15 percent and we wish to warn Ma that his first term of presidency will end with an impeachment,” Ker said, adding that the motion also serves to let history show the will of the people in current times and leave a record of the attempted -impeachment in the legislature.
“The policies of the Ma administration are completely against the public’s will and the impeachment effort against Ma is the right thing to do,” TSU spokesperson Hsu Chung-hsin (許忠信) said, adding that the TSU caucus would move to amend the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法) and make the “unable to be impeached until one full year in office” clause inapplicable to a president who has won a second term.
Article 70 of the act states that presidents cannot be impeached within a year after they are sworn in. However, it does not say whether the rule applies to a president’s second term.
The amendment is to prevent presidents who have been elected for a second term from raising prices immediately after being elected and ruining the economy, Hsu said, adding that if the impeachment is not successful, the TSU would initiate another impeachment motion after the first year of Ma’s second term.
Reacting to the announcement, KMT legislators said the initiative to impeach Ma was nothing but “political in-fighting.”
The pan-blue PFP also opposed the impeachment motion, further reducing the already slim chances of the proposal passing the legislature.
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said he regretted the DPP and the TSU were willing to “deliberately stir up trouble” with only a few days of Ma’s first term left.
“It doesn’t make any sense to impeach Ma at this time,” KMT caucus whip Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said. “It’s merely an act of political -manipulation that cannot contribute anything to society. It’s farcical.”
PFP caucus whip Thomas Lee (李桐豪) said PFP lawmakers did not put their names to the initiative, but would not block it from being placed on the legislative agenda.
The impeachment “has little or no substantial meaning” because Ma is approaching the end of his term of office, but the DPP and the TSU “have the right to have it reviewed at plenary session as long as they have adequate signatures to sustain the motion,” Lee said.
Translation by Jake Chung, Staff Writer
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique