Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairman Rai Hau-min (賴浩敏) yesterday reiterated his belief that the newly amended Election and Recall Act for Public Servants (公職人員選舉罷免法) may be in violation of the Constitution.
“I’ve said before [at legislative meetings] that the law’s revision may be unconstitutional, and I still hold the same view today,” Rai said. “But only the Council of Grand Justices has the power to decide whether it’s unconstitutional.”
“As the head of the CEC, of course I do not want the commission to hold an election that would be later declared invalid,” he added, “but again, the CEC makes decisions as a whole, so I cannot promise what the CEC will do, but I will raise the issue at commission meetings.”
Rai made the remark after a meeting with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator William Lai (賴清德) yesterday. Lai, who holds a similar view, called on the CEC to act.
Despite opposition from the DPP, amendments to the election law were passed by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-dominated legislature last week. The amended bill stipulates that current electoral districts should remain unchanged for the next decade, even though many cities and counties are going to merge and become special municipalities in November.
Originally, the numbers of legislative seats in the Special Municipalities of Tainan and Kaohsiung — after city-county mergers — were subject to possible change because of the change in their populations, but now the numbers of seats will remain the same because of the amendment.
“The newly revised election law is unconstitutional,” Lai told the press after meeting with Rai. “If the Council of Grand Justices declares it unconstitutional after the next legislative election [in 2012] because someone files an application for a constitutional interpretation, the election results could become invalid and we would have to hold the election all over again.”
“Hence the CEC should intervene before it happens,” Lai added.
According to the Constitution, each special municipality, each city and each county should elect its own representatives to the Legislative Yuan according to its population, so Lai believes it is unconstitutional to keep the numbers of seats the same despite the mergers.
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