The Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) highest decision-making body yesterday agreed unanimously to urge President Chen Shui-bian (
"We reached the resolution because we all agreed confidentiality, which includes national security, should be safeguarded," DPP Chairman Yu Shyi-kun told a news conference after the party's weekly Central Standing Committee meeting yesterday.
A proposal was put forward by DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) during the meeting in opposition to the Taipei District Court's decision to open documents related to secret diplomatic missions in the "state affairs fund" case on Tuesday.
PHOTO: LIU HSIN-DE, TAIPEI TIMES
Earlier yesterday, Ker told a separate press conference that the caucus believed prosecutors and the court had come together on the case "to the extent that they were staging a `soft judicial coup.'"
The district court was in "asymmetric opposition" to the Constitution, which was likely to give rise to a crisis on a constitutional and national security level, he said.
"We strongly suggest the president file a constitutional interpretation application ... the president should not dodge his responsibility," Ker said. "This event concerns national security, not the president's honor. [The president] should not worry about any outside opinions, either."
The caucus also urged the president to ask the Council of Grand Justices to reach a ruling as soon as possible once the president had filed for an interpretation.
DPP Legislator Chuang Suo-hang (莊碩漢), who was at the news conference, said judicial power should play a "defensive" and "passive" role under the government structure which separates executive, legislative and judicial power.
He said the district court's ruling and prosecutors' attitude toward the case were damaging the balance between the three branches and might lead to a constitutional crisis.
A pro-independence political pressure group yesterday held a separate news conference, urging the president, the head of the Judicial Yuan and the Taipei District Court to seek constitutional interpretations from the Council of Grand Justices to settle the dispute over the case.
The Northern Taiwan Society also launched an online signature drive yesterday to support their cause.
"The move is not for the president, but for the country's democratic development," said society chairman Wu Shuh-min (吳樹民).
Alleging that the "state affairs fund" case contained 10 "serious flaws," Chet Yang (楊文嘉), the society's secretary-general, said the nature of the case was not an act of corruption, but "an extraordinary case resulting from the need for secret diplomatic missions, unhealthy budget and auditing systems and executive practices established during the authoritarian era."
As any judicial inquiry concerning the president is unconstitutional, the court hearing is bound to be biased and any result will mean a miscarriage of justice and lead to the collapse of the judicial system, he said.
Yang criticized the court and prosecutors for their "near sickly and stubborn" rejection of "executive privilege," the "state secrets privilege" enjoyed by the president and for adopting a suppressive approach,as used in a feudal society, to hear the case and keep the defense lawyers in line.
"This is a battle between `Taiwanese lawyers' and `Chinese judges,'" Yang said. "This unprecedented case is a wake-up call for the direction of judicial reform and the Taiwanese people's resolve to forge ahead with it."
In a bid to leave a legacy of legal precedent and a sound system, Yang said that it is not only within the president's power, but also his duty to ask the council to settle the dispute.
Yang also urged Judicial Yuan President Weng Yueh-sheng (翁岳生) to seek a constitutional interpretation from the council to "resolve the constitutional crisis and any subsequent chain reaction."
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
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater