With the Judicial Yuan preparing to pay each grand justice around NT$900,000 (US$26,756) for 10 months' unpaid "professional bonus" -- in defiance of the legislature and armed with a Council of Grand Justices ruling on the matter -- pan-blue-camp legislators responded by saying that they would cut next year's budget for the Judicial Yuan.
"Although the Council of Grand Justices ruled that the legislature's removal of its professional bonus was unconstitutional, the pan-blue parties still think that the grand justices should not receive the professional bonus. So, the oppos-ition parties will challenge the Judicial Yuan's proposed budget for next year," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chao-shun (
A Chinese-language newspaper reported yesterday that the Judicial Yuan was preparing to move reserve funds to pay the grand justices more than NT$900,000 in professional bonuses which have been blocked since January when the legislature removed the money from the budget.
PHOTO: WANG YI-SUNG, TAIPEI TIMES
The report was confirmed by the Judicial Yuan yesterday.
The Council of Grand Justices in July ruled that the Legislative Yuan's removal of their professional bonus was unconstitutional, rejecting pan-blue legislators' arguments that the grand justices were not judges, and therefore not entitled to the bonus.
The council's interpretation said grand justices are judges who decide whether a case is constitutional.
The legislature on Jan. 20 decided to remove the bonus from the salaries of the grand justices and the Judicial Yuan president and vice president, equivalent to a NT$89,325 deduction from their monthly paychecks.
The council also denied that there was a conflict of interest in members ruling on their own salaries, because the constitutional interpretation did not in itself increase the grand justices' income.
The ruling also said that Judicial Yuan President Weng Yueh-sheng (
KMT and People First Party legislators admitted the move to cut the bonuses was punishment for the grand justices' ruling that the March 19 Shooting Truth Investigation Special Committee Statute (
The statute was passed by the legislature to investigate the assassination attempt last year on President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) on suspicion that Chen had faked the shooting in an effort to influence the outcome of the election.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching