The Central Election Commission (CEC) should request the Council of Grand Justices to rule on whether recall campaigning restrictions are unconstitutional, Appendectomy Project campaigners said yesterday at a protest outside the commission’s offices in Taipei.
“We hope the CEC can go along with public opinion and accept the recommendation of the Taipei City Election Commission to send this case to the Grand Justices,” Appendectomy Project spokesman Lin Tzu-yi (林祖儀) said.
On Thursday, the Taipei commission granted activists a stay from an estimated NT$600,000 (US$18,308) in fines for violating the Election and Recall Act for Public Servants (公職人員選舉罷免法), recommending the CEC request the Grand Justices to rule on whether the law’s ban on recall campaigning violated freedom of speech.
Activists had handed out pamphlets and held marches and rallies as part of a failed effort to recall Chinese Nationalist Party Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元).
“The Taipei commission is in a difficult place because the law is still in place, but is highly controversial,” Lin said, adding that judicial intervention was necessary because amendments to drop the ban on recall campaigning have stalled in the Legislative Yuan.
Activists have criticized the ban, saying that it violates freedom of speech and the people’s “right to know” while making it nearly impossible to achieve the 50 percent voter turnout necessary for the recall result to be valid.
Taipei City Election Commission Deputy Director-General Huang Hsi-ming (黃細明) on Thursday criticized the ban for banning all campaign activity throughout the recall process regardless of time and place, unlike restrictions on campaigning on election days.
Lin said that while the recall campaigners were confident of a favorable ruling if the Grand Justices heard their case, they were concerned that the CEC would refuse to request a constitutional review.
Throughout recall efforts, the CEC had shown itself to be more “rigid” than the local Taipei commission, Lin said. He said that during recall efforts, it had also refused requests to outline what promotional measures would be legal, telling recall campaigners that a judgement could only be made after the fact on a “case-by-case” basis.
Independent legislative candidate Lin Shao-chi (林少馳) — a former Appendectomy Project volunteer — also called for the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act to be amended to drop turnout vote requirements, while also mandating an automatic recall vote to be held for all legislators two years after they are elected.
CEC Deputy Chairman Chen Wen-sheng (陳文生) said that the commission would hold a meeting to discuss the Taipei commission’s recommendation, adding that the commission itself had recommended the Legislative Yuan amend the law to drop the restrictions.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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