President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should consider delaying a planned judicial reform congress to allow more time for consideration of Judicial Yuan presidential and vice presidential nominees, civic groups said yesterday.
“Nominations should not be made hastily just because of the judicial reform congress — in fact, the congress is important enough that it would be acceptable to push it back a bit,” Grand Justice Selection Civic Watchdog Alliance (民間監督大法官人選聯盟) convener Chiu Hei-yuan (瞿海源) said after activists emerged from a meeting with Tsai at the Presidential Office Building yesterday.
Tsai in her inaugural address promised to call a judicial reform congress on increasing civic participation in the judiciary in October.
“A delay is necessary because the quality of the congress — not how quickly it is called — is what is most important, and it is crucial that nominations [for Judicial Yuan president and vice president] be rigorously reviewed,” Chiu said.
Tsai nominated Public Functionary Disciplinary Sanction Commission Chief Commissioner Hsieh Wen-ting (謝文定) to serve as Judicial Yuan president, while picking Judicial Yuan Secretary-General Lin Chin-fang (林錦芳) to serve as Judicial Yuan vice president, which drew criticism from civic activists, who said both nominees are unqualified to head reform efforts.
Chiu quoted Tsai as saying that she would “consider” withdrawing the nominees, and admitting that she had personally picked them instead of relying on the recommendations of the Presidential Office’s small working group for nominating Grand Justices.
Activists said that Tsai justified her choices by citing the importance of career judicial bureaucrats like Hsieh and Lin playing a role in judicial reform efforts.
“Because people with a practitioner’s background tend to be conservative and the Judicial Yuan’s president and vice president are not supposed to serve as ‘secretaries’ for judicial reform, practical experience should not be a condition for nomination,” he said.
Activists have urged the nomination of leading legal experts.
Chiu said that while activists were not satisfied with Tsai’s response, there was still time for reconsideration and review because Legislative Yuan consideration of the nominees is not scheduled until at least September, when this year’s second normal legislative session begins.
“We find it completely unacceptable to nominate a Judicial Yuan president who has never expressed any interest in judicial reform in the past,” Judicial Reform Foundation chairman Joseph Lin (林永頌) said, alleging that Hsieh was involved in prosecuting political cases as a public prosecutor in the Martial Law era.
HORROR STORIES: One victim recounted not realizing they had been stabbed and seeing people bleeding, while another recalled breaking down in tears after fleeing A man on Friday died after he tried to fight the knife-wielding suspect who went on a stabbing spree near two of Taipei’s busiest metro stations, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said. The 57-year-old man, identified by his family name, Yu (余), encountered the suspect at Exit M7 of Taipei Main Station and immediately tried to stop him, but was fatally wounded and later died, Chiang said, calling the incident “heartbreaking.” Yu’s family would receive at least NT$5 million (US$158,584) in compensation through the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp’s (TRTC) insurance coverage, he said after convening an emergency security response meeting yesterday morning. National
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
PLANNED: The suspect visited the crime scene before the killings, seeking information on how to access the roof, and had extensively researched a 2014 stabbing incident The suspect in a stabbing attack that killed three people and injured 11 in Taipei on Friday had planned the assault and set fires at other locations earlier in the day, law enforcement officials said yesterday. National Police Agency (NPA) Director-General Chang Jung-hsin (張榮興) said the suspect, a 27-year-old man named Chang Wen (張文), began the attacks at 3:40pm, first setting off smoke bombs on a road, damaging cars and motorbikes. Earlier, Chang Wen set fire to a rental room where he was staying on Gongyuan Road in Zhongzheng District (中正), Chang Jung-hsin said. The suspect later threw smoke grenades near two exits
The Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency yesterday launched a gift box to market honey “certified by a Formosan black bear” in appreciation of a beekeeper’s amicable interaction with a honey-thieving bear. Beekeeper Chih Ming-chen (池明鎮) in January inspected his bee farm in Hualien County’s Jhuosi Township (卓溪) and found that more than 20 beehives had been destroyed and many hives were eaten, with bear droppings and paw prints near the destroyed hives, the agency said. Chih returned to the farm to move the remaining beehives away that evening when he encountered a Formosan black bear only 20m away, the agency said. The bear
RSS