President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) nominees to head up the Judicial Yuan and the Council of Grand Justices were put under the scrutiny of lawmakers and legal experts yesterday.
Probing questions and requests to clarify their stances on legal issues were posed to the nominees at a public hearing of the legislature yesterday.
Although the seven nominees did not attend yesterday’s hearing, the session as conducted by lawmakers and legal experts was part of the process for which the legislature will either confirm or reject the whole slate or some of the nominated names.
Tsai’s nominations were the former grand justice Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) for president of the Judicial Yuan, and Taiwan High Court judge Tsai Chung-tun (蔡?燉) for vice president of the body. The five nominees for the Council of Grand Justices were: National Taiwan University (NTU) College of Law Dean Jan Sheng-lin (詹森林), NTU law professor Hwang Jau-yuan (黃昭元), National Chiayi University professor Hsu Chih-hsiung (許志雄), attorney at law firm Baker & McKenzie Remington Huang (黃瑞明), and former high court judge and Judicial Yuan secretary-general Chang Chiung-wen (張瓊文).
By law, the Judicial Yuan president and vice president serve ex officio on the Council of Grand Justices.
New Power Party chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said his party would support Hsu Tzong-li and Tsai Chung-tun to head up the Judicial Yuan, since the two men have promised to push for judicial reform, and have agreed in principle to institute some sort of mechanism to review the judiciary performance and conduct of judges and grand justices, but each man has a different approach.
Huang Kuo-Chang said that if this entire slate of nominees were to be approved and confirmed by the legislature, they must not renege on their promises and must lead the way in undertaking reforms, and make the justice system more responsive to the needs of the public.
“We have heard about the demands for judicial reform, and many recommendations have been touted in past years. However, there has been no action to follow, or else the lawmakers would made some noise, but no implementation of the reform policies. Therefore we hope that when the Judicial Yuan’s new president and vice president take up their posts, they can fulfil the expectations for change and reform by most of society,” Huang Kuo-Chang said.
At the hearing, law professor Lin Chia-ho (林佳和) said the public and lawmakers must closely scrutinize the incoming grand justices on their stances toward key legal issues, because Taiwan must not go back to its old ways of “conservative” interpretation of the law, which led critics to question whether bias was involved in constitutional rulings.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,