President Ma Ying-joeu (馬英九) has nominated Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Head Prosecutor Yen Ta-ho (顏大和) to be the next prosecutor-general and has forwarded the necessary documents to the Legislative Yuan for approval, the Presidential Office said yesterday.
Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) is due to step down on April 18.
Regulations state that prosecutors-general may not serve successive terms and the president must nominate a replacement a month before the prosecutor-general in office is due to step down.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Huang has been embroiled in controversy following his involvement in the so-called “September strife” between Ma and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
Huang visited Ma before announcing the result of a Special Investigation Division investigation and later admitted to authorizing a series of wiretaps.
Presidential Office spokesperson Lee Chia-fei (李佳霏) yesterday said that Yen had been nominated because he had been in the judicial system for a long time and is familiar with legal cases of all kinds, as well as how the law has changed over the years.
Yen is a figure prosecutors look up to and he possesses a keen sense for political and economic cases, Lee said.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials said Yen has moral integrity, pointing to how he investigated former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Chen Che-nan (陳哲男), former deputy minister of the interior Yen Wan-ching (顏萬進) and then-president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) son-in-law Chao Chien-ming (趙建銘), despite the fact that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was in power at the time.
KMT Legislator Liao Cheng-ching (廖正井) said Yen was an adequate choice and was suitable for the job, while most DPP lawmakers said they were unfamiliar with Yen and would have to wait and see.
DPP caucus whip Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) said the Presidential Office should take Huang’s example to heart and try to appoint someone who is capable of cleaning up the stain left on the position.
Prosecutors’ Association spokesman Chen Wen-chi (陳文琪) said Yen was definitely capable of doing the job, while Judicial Reform Foundation director Kao Chih-jung (高志榮) said Huang had also been the top choice and the foundation would be closely watching the performance of the new prosecutor-general.
Additional reporting by Hou Po-ching
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