The Council of Grand Justices yesterday ruled that the legislature's refusal to review a list of nominees for the Control Yuan is unconstitutional.
The Council of Grand Justices issued the constitutional interpretation yesterday in response to a request filed by the Democratic Progressive Party caucus in 2005, asking it to rule on the constitutionality of the legislature's refusal to screen a Control Yuan nomination list.
President Chen Shui-bian (
However, the list of nominees has so far not been discussed by the legislature because the legislature's opposition-controlled Procedure Committee has not moved to put it on the legislative agenda.
"The Control Yuan is one of the nation's most significant government organizations," Judicial Yuan Secretary-General Fan Kuang-chun (
"Since the legislature has refused to screen a Control Yuan nomination list, the Control Yuan cannot carry out its work, which damages the nation's constitutional system," he said.
Fan said that the legislature should swiftly convene meetings to examine a Control Yuan nomination list to prevent the unconstitutional situation from continuing.
As a result of the opposition's refusal to review the list, the Control Yuan has been paralyzed since the six-year tenure of the previous Control Yuan members expired in January 2005.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
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The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
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