Complaining the judiciary was partisan, the People First Party (PFP) legislative caucus yesterday proposed to amend the Organic Law of the Judicial Yuan (司法院組織法) to allow the State Public Prosecutor-General to assign an independent prosecutor or task force to handle major cases.
The amendment would require that candidates for the post of prosecutor-general be nominated by the president and approved by the Legislative Yuan. Appointees would be restricted to one five-year term.
The PFP caucus claimed that more than 500 prosecutors had signed a petition demanding that an independent prosecutorial system be established.
"The government has wrongly given priority to several cases. The important and urgent cases are not speedily dealt with, yet the minor cases are getting immediate attention," PFP Legislator Pang Chien-kuo (龐建國) said.
"We must ask whether prosecutors are coming under pressure -- so their neutrality is questionable. It is urgent that we establish an independent prosecutorial system," Pang said.
PFP Legislator Chou Hsi-wei (
"While [PFP Legislator] Chiu Yi's (邱毅) case was expedited, former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) was still only summoned as a witness in the National Security Bureau case. This shows that the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] administration is protecting its supporters and suppressing its opponents," Chou said.
PFP Legislator Liu Wen-hsiung (
"The DPP government has been prosecuting pan-blue supporters, even film stars Brigitte Lin (
Liu said the PFP's feeling that political prosecutions were taking place emerged after PFP legislators Feng Ting-kuo (
Liu said that Feng and Lee Ching-hua visited Central Election Commission Chairman Huang Shih-cheng (
Liu said they had done so only to suggest the commission had made the announcement illegally and that they were entitled to make the suggestion at the commission's premises.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS