Minister of Justice Yeh Chin-feng (
At the ministry's year-end press conference yesterday, Yeh announced policy directions for next year, which include carrying out various reforms proposed for the prosecutorial system, reviewing laws and drafting new legislation and tough new measures against crime.
Looking back at this year, Yeh said she has high regards for every member of the ministry for their hard work over the year.
She outlined a number of achievements for the ministry, from overhauling the existing legal framework to playing an active role in pushing for various judicial reform plans.
However, a few prosecutors in the ministry and non-governmental reform activists disagreed with Yeh's assessment, giving the ministry low marks for its performance.
"The ministry gets a failing score this year because its rigid stance has put off implementation of reform for another ten years at least," said Sue Wang (
Referring to the ministry's anti-reform stance throughout the National Judicial Reform Foundation conference last July, Wang said Yeh used her veto rights at the decision-making level to block implementation of major proposals agreed to by conference delegates.
"Her vote denied all the efforts of others. It's really a tremendous responsibility," Wang said.
For many in the legal community, the National Judicial Reform Conference marked the biggest event of the year, where fundamental changes to the island's legal system were recommended by representatives from the court system, the prosecutorial system, bar associations, academics and social critics.
On a variety of matters relating to the working of the court system -- such as making the system a more adversarial one -- the ministry expressed strong opposition and had heated quarrels with other conference representatives who were pushing strongly for more reform.
While the decision-making body of the reform conference finalized the conclusions of the conference, Yeh vetoed some of the major proposals and has been harshly criticized for her actions ever since.
Chen Jui-jen (
"Don't talk the official language in a standard manner. Please tell us what you think of reforming the system and give us concrete ideas about it. Until you do, we can't continue discussions with you," Chen told the minster.
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