On Tuesday last week, representatives of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus held a news conference at which they declared their opposition to the government’s nominees for Control Yuan members. They asked why the governing Democratic Progressive Party is proposing a full list of nominees for Control Yuan membership even though it has called for abolishing the Control Yuan and the Examination Yuan.
The KMT legislators announced that their caucus would boycott President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) Control Yuan nominations on the grounds that the Examination Yuan and Control Yuan should be abolished.
However, from a legal point of view, the proposal to abolish these two branches of government is a completely separate matter from the president’s duty to nominate Control Yuan members. Until such time as the Constitution is amended to abolish these two branches, the president must nominate members to the Examination Yuan and Control Yuan in accordance with the Constitution as it is. To do otherwise would be unconstitutional.
Council of Grand Justices Constitutional Interpretation No. 632 says: “The Control Yuan is an integral and indispensable national agency for the normal operations of the constitutional system with its specific power bestowed by the Constitution. Given that the [president], [vice president] and [members] are all legal positions preserved by the Constitution, it behooves all constitutional agencies, as regards their respective duties, to maintain the functional existence and normal operations of the Control Yuan.”
“To ensure the continuous exercise of power by the Control Yuan, prior to the expiration of the term of the incumbent [president], [vice president] and [members], the president should nominate candidates to fill these positions in a timely manner and seek the Legislative Yuan’s consent. The Legislative Yuan, in turn, should exercise such consent power in a timely manner to maintain the normal operations of the Control Yuan,” it says.
“The Constitution does not allow for the event in which either the president or the Legislative Yuan fails to nominate or consent to the nomination of candidates so that the Control Yuan cannot exercise its power or function, thereby jeopardizing the integrity of the constitutional system,” it adds.
That, once more, means that until such time as the Constitution is amended to abolish the Examination Yuan and Control Yuan, it would be unconstitutional for the president not to nominate Control Yuan members.
If the KMT really is in favor of abolishing the Examination Yuan and Control Yuan, it should act like a responsible opposition party by proposing a draft constitutional amendment.
If the KMT continues to conflate the issues of abolishing the examination and control branches with that of the president’s duty to nominate Control Yuan members, the debate would descend into a shouting match that does nothing constructive for constitutional politics.
Huang Di-ying is a lawyer and chairman of the Taiwan Forever Association.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers
RSS