President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should push for a constitutional change to eliminate the Control Yuan rather than continuing to nominate new members as terms expire, civic groups said yesterday at an academic forum.
“Even though this issue has been put on the back burner, we expect a list of nominees to emerge soon, making it an important issue to consider given that both Tsai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) promised to abolish the Control Yuan,” Taipei Society head Chiou Wen-tsong (邱文聰) said, adding that his group and other participants all refused the Presidential Office’s invitation to recommend Control Yuan candidates because of their stance.
“A national human rights commission should be established, and the constitutional amendment process should be initiated to fulfill the DPP’s electoral promise to push for the Control Yuan’s abolition. There has never been a better time to make the push,” Taiwan Association for Human Rights executive board member Liu Ching-yi (劉靜怡) said, adding that current human rights work was too reliant on the goodwill of individual Control Yuan members.
The Control Yuan has long opposed the establishment of a separate human rights commission, claiming that investing a commission with investigatory and censorship powers would infringe on its own authority.
“It clearly does not have good judgement on what laws and governmental behavior are in accordance with human rights standards,” Covenants Watch executive board member Huang Song-lih (黃嵩立) said.
A Control Yuan ruling that faulted the executive branch for failing to take action against uncompensated use of government land set into motion a wave of forced eviction cases against disadvantaged residents, he said.
“The motivation behind the government’s move to nominate officials looks suspiciously like sharing political spoils,” Taiwan Democracy Watch president Chen Chao-ju (陳昭如) said, calling for Tsai to explain how the nominations would tie into her pledge to abolish the Control Yuan.
DPP Legislator Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) said he had initially been opposed to making new nominations, but had been told by Tsai that making the nominations was her constitutional duty and she hoped to use them to strengthen the Control Yuan’s supervision of the judicial branch.
“The Control Yuan should be abolished and a national human rights commission should be established, while the need for fundamental constitutional change remains the same,” he said, comparing the current Republic of China constitutional framework to a piece of illegal architecture that the DPP would to aim to gradually “shake loose,” because the high threshold for constitutional amendments makes “complete demolition” difficult.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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