President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday it was important to have more debate on whether to abolish the death penalty, adding that it would take time before answers were found.
Ma said that whether to abolish capital punishment or stay executions indefinitely were two different issues that should be addressed separately.
This was the first time Ma commented on the matter since former minister of justice Wang Ching-feng (王清峰) resigned on Thursday amid a public outcry after her announcement that she would not sign execution orders for the 44 convicts on death row during her term.
Ma said the interim steps the administration had taken before abolishing the death penalty were the proper way to go.
Those measures include dropping the mandatory death penalty, tightening procedures for issuing death sentences, lengthening prison sentences for serious crimes and raising the parole threshold for life sentences, he said.
Ma said that education, debate and promotion of the issue, however, were seriously inadequate.
“I hope the public, including the Ministry of Justice, will look into the issue [and provide] room for rational discussion,” he said.
Ma said that while he understood the process would take time, if there were no public debate, it would continue to remain a highly emotional — and potentially detrimental — subject.
Ma made the remarks during a meeting with the Prosecutors Association at the Presidential Office yesterday morning.
He called on the association, the judiciary and the justice ministry to play a more active role in promoting the idea of abolishing capital punishment.
Ma said that in 1995, when he was minister of justice, the ministry conducted an opinion poll on the abolition of the death penalty, which found that 72 percent of ordinary people, 78 percent of the elite (such as university professors or businesspeople) and 88 percent of judicial personnel — including prosecutors, judges and court clerks — opposed abolition.
“It is interesting,” Ma said. “Half of the respondents said they did not think the death penalty was an effective deterrent to serious crime. I think most people are against abolishing the death penalty mainly because of a lack of security.”
Ma said that by asking university students the same question on various occasions, he found that more women were against abolishing the death penalty than men.
“I don’t intend to emphasize the differences between men and women, but it seems their intuition is that it would not be safe to abolish the death penalty,” he said. “It also shows that they don’t understand the issue very well.”
The question of the death penalty is a matter of concern globally, Ma said, and the UN also passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty.
Meanwhile, acting Minister of Justice Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘), who Ma has nominated for state prosecutor-general, yesterday denied he had “murdered” Wang with his remarks on the death penalty during a legislative hearing last week.
“I told Wang when she invited me to be her vice minister in May 2008 that my position was that the 29 people on death row [at that time] should be executed according to the law and she said she understood my position,” Huang told a legislative hearing to review his nomination yesterday afternoon.
Earlier, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Chun-yee (李俊毅) asked Huang whether his remark had led to Wang’s downfall.
“You ‘murdered’ Wang,” Lee said.
“Before I came to the first legislative hearing last Monday, I knew legislators would ask me questions about the death penalty. I asked Wang how I should answer the questions. She told me to state my position honestly,” Huang said.
“I do not agree with your claim that I ‘murdered’ Wang,” he said.
Huang became acting minister after Wang left her post on Thursday.
Lee also asked whether Huang would order the execution of people on death row as acting minister.
“The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and the ministry must study the documents concerning the 44 inmates on death row before the ministry decides whether to carry out the execution orders,” Huang said.
Huang said he would carry out execution orders as required by law.
Huang told a legislative hearing last Monday that while the 44 people on death row should be executed, he would support an amendment abolishing the death penalty.
Wang, a devout Buddhist, published a statement titled Reason and Forgiveness — Suspension of Practicing the Death Penalty last Tuesday, in which she expressed her opposition to capital punishment.
“I will not execute any of the people on death row during my term. I would rather go to hell,” Wang also told reporters.
Wang then tendered her resignation on Thursday after a public outcry over her statement.
Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) approved it hours after reporting the matter to Ma.
Wang’s resignation came hours after the Presidential Office broke its silence on capital punishment, saying that death sentences should be carried out and that any stay of execution must follow the law.
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