President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) appointment last week of a cousin-in-law to head of the Supreme Administrative Court might be an overreach of her powers, the Taiwan Jury Association said yesterday.
The appointment of High Administrative Court Judge Wu ming-hung (吳明鴻) to be president of the Supreme Administrative Court took effect yesterday.
Association director Chen Wei-shyang (陳為祥) said that the highest-ranking executive branch official appointing a relative to head the Supreme Administrative Court — which arbitrates disputes between the public and the government — is a breach of the principle of separation of powers.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The appointment could lead to further distrust of the judiciary, which is already highly distrusted, Chen said.
Association founder Jerry Cheng (鄭文龍) said that Tsai’s actions confirmed a claim by Chinese-language magazine Yazhou Zhoukan’s that she is an authoritarian, referring to this week’s edition of the Hong Kong-based periodical.
The Yazhou Zhoukan said in its feature article that Taiwan was under a new authoritarian government headed by Tsai, characterizing her administration as a “dictatorship arising from a popular election.”
Wu’s appointment is indicative that Tsai is openly reintroducing a dynasty-based system of leadership, an act that no democratically elected president has dared to attempt, Cheng said.
Wu is the husband of Tsai’s cousin, Lin Mei-chu (林美珠), who was minister of labor from February 2017 to February 2018.
The Administrative Court during the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) administrations decided 60 to 70 percent of the cases it heard in favor of the public, but these days it is jokingly known as the “the court of rejection” with fewer than 10 percent of decisions favoring the people, Cheng said.
Cases dealing with state compensation should be dealt with by administrative courts, but in Taiwan are heard by civil courts, Cheng added.
Revocation of administrative courts was mooted in a judicial reform committee meeting in 1999, but there has been no action since then, he said, adding that for all of Tsai’s claims of success, her administration has made a mess of judicial reform.
The KMT on Saturday last week said that the appointment has raised questions regarding judicial independence and greatly increased the possibility of presidential intervention in the judiciary.
Presidential Office spokesman Xavier Chang (張惇涵) said that the Presidential Office respects all personnel appointed by the Judicial Yuan.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiao-kuang and Lee Hsin-fang
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