An act governing presidential power should be enacted by the legislature to restrain the president from extending his power at will and the president should not serve as the chairman of his political party, activists proposed yesterday.
In light of what they said was President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent infringement of the Constitution with his “plot” to oust Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) charter revision to have the incumbent president automatically serve as KMT chairman, several groups, among them Taiwan Democracy Watch (TDW) and the Judicial Reform Foundation, made the recommendation at a press conference in Taipei.
“The political system in Taiwan has tilted toward presidentialism over the years, but it has been extremely difficult to amend the Constitution given the high threshold,” said National Taiwan University professor Yen Chueh-an (顏厥安), who also serves as a TWD spokesperson.
“That is why something has to be done to stop the president from abusing his administrative powers,” Yen said, summing up the opinion of the activists.
Citing the US as an example, the professor said that the US Code has placed limits on presidential power, while the War Powers Resolution, passed by the US Congress in 1973, also constrained the president’s power to commit the country to armed conflict.
The US example shows that an act governing presidential power could be initiated and enacted by lawmakers without violating the Constitution, he said.
The activists said the change to the KMT charter would be inconsistent with the Constitution, which stipulates that the nation’s armed forces should be nonpartisan.
It would be ironic if the armed forces should be nonpartisan and the president, the commander-in-chief, is not required to be nonpartisan, Yen said, adding that a president who doubles as party chairman is “too much of a constitutional risk to take.”
The groups also recommended that the legislative speaker should not serve in any position in his or her political party and that the president should not meet with the heads of independent agencies, such as the prosecutor-general and the National Police Agency director-general.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods