By a 12-3 vote, the council decided yesterday that the Executive Yuan should report to the legislature as soon as possible to remedy its procedural errors in announcing the decision to scrap the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
The reasoning process began with the council's premise that a budget is different from legislation so, under certain circumstances, the Executive Yuan has discretion to halt implementation of government budgets.
The council also noted that in a democracy, it is very common that policies change with shifts of ruling parties. To carry out campaign promises, it is natural for a new president to change existing policies that are at odds with his pledges, the council said.
However, the justices also noted that any changes to important national policies, such as the nuclear power plant issue, should be subject to the legislature's consent and urged the Executive Yuan to report to the legislature on its decision to scrap the nuclear power plant. Continued failure to make the report would violate the Constitution, the council said.
While blaming the Executive Yuan, the council at the same time cautioned opposition lawmakers, urging them to discontinue their boycott of the government, barring it from delivering any report on the issue in the Legislature.
At first glance it may seem like the council has censured both the DPP Cabinet and opposition lawmakers for causing political disputes.
In fact, the council's ruling yesterday was more in the ruling party's favor than the opposition's as it offered possible solutions for the Executive Yuan to untangle the deadlock over the highly contentious issue of the nuclear power plant.
Given the highly political nature of the issue, the individual ideologies of the 15 justices have played a crucial role in the decision-making process.
Though all the current justices were appointed by former president Lee Teng-hui (
Similarly, the justices lean toward the ideologies of the KMT, or the DPP or the middle ground.
According to legal scholars, the justices' ideologies were an important factor in the decision-making process on issues of a political nature, such as distribution of power in the government. The power plant is exactly this kind of issue.
"In Taiwan there is no line between liberals and conservatives, in Taiwan it is a line between ideological differences over reunification. Ideology in the end will influence decisions concerning political disputes," said one legal scholar who wished to remain anonymous.
"This is unavoidable given Taiwan's political situation."
While the Executive Yuan, controlled by the DPP, maintains it has the administrative discretion to change policies to halt the power plant project, a majority of lawmakers of the KMT, the PFP, and the New Party, insist the decision was unconstitutional.
In their dissenting opinions, the three justices -- Liu Tieh-cheng (
The political nature of the issue is such, that at one point, there was little room for compromise and votes of the justices from the middle ground thus determined the direction of the final decision, the scholar added.
But the fact that at least two-thirds of votes are needed to form a decision of the council eventually forced the justices to listen to the other side of the argument and to come up with a compromise.
That is why the ruling, instead of resorting to a dichotomy of "constitutional" and "unconstitutional,"held the Executive Yuan's decision as constitutional but with procedural flaws, one grand justice said yesterday.
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