Judicial watchdog groups yesterday panned the nomination process for the Council of Grand Justices as “severely flawed” and not rigorous enough, calling on the four grand justice candidates to decline their nominations.
The nominees — Chen Be-yue (陳碧玉), Huang Hsi-chun (黃璽君), Lo Chang-fa (羅昌發) and Tang Te-tsung (湯德宗) — were nominated by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) late last month to replace the four incumbent grand justices, whose terms are due to expire at the end of September.
Following the sudden change of grand justice nominee Supreme Court Judge Shao Yen-ling (邵燕玲), who declined Ma’s nomination after a media uproar over her role in a controversial child molestation ruling, Chen also found herself at the center of controversy.
Chen, head of the Judicial Personnel Study Center, once held a US green card during her stint as a Supreme Court judge. Lo, a chair professor at National Taiwan University, at one time had permanent residency in Canada.
“The nominations have betrayed the lack of seriousness that Ma has shown toward the judicial system and judicial reform,” said Liu Ching-yi (劉靜怡), an associate professor of law at National Taiwan University that is a part of the non-profit Taiwan Democracy Watch.
An umbrella organization of seven judicial groups, including the Taiwan Bar Association, has said that it would boycott offering further views on the nominations in a sign of protest.
Chiu Hei-yuan (瞿海源), a research fellow at Academia Sinica that spoke for the umbrella group, said that this would be the first year since 2003 that judicial watchdogs have refused to issue an opinion on the Grand Justice nominations.
“This boycott represents our opinion on the current candidates,” he said, adding that Ma needed to “seriously consider” reopening the entire nomination process.
“It will return some of the respect to the Grand Justice position,” he said.
The list of the four grand justices nominees was sent to the legislature on Wednesday for approval.
A cross-party negotiation initially slated to take place yestersday to discuss the review procedures has been postponed to Monday.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS