More than half of Taiwanese say they do not believe in the credibility of the judiciary, a survey released yesterday by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-affiliated National Policy Foundation showed.
The survey found that 52.5 percent of respondents did not trust the credibility of the judicial system, compared with 34.2 percent who did.
It found that 57.6 percent did not believe that judges would try cases fairly, while 31.8 percent said they believed that they would.
Asked if they believed that “the Council of Grand Justices has not been subjected to improper interference, and interpret the Constitution objectively and fairly,” 52.6 percent said that they did not, while 29.7 percent said that they did, the foundation said.
Asked whether they understood President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) ideas and proposals on judicial reform, 83.8 percent said that they did not and 12.8 percent said that they did, the survey showed.
Asked whether they had confidence in the effectiveness of Tsai’s efforts to promote judicial reform, 46.8 percent said that they did not, while 43 percent said that they did, it showed.
The public’s lack of understanding of the president’s ideas and proposals for judicial reform should serve as a “major warning,” Chinese Culture University law professor Wu Yen-te (吳盈德) said at a news conference in Taipei.
Given that nearly half of the respondents in the survey were not confident in the reform of the judicial system, it appears that Tsai needs to work harder, he said.
Improving public confidence in the credibility of the judiciary should be seen as as a major task for the remainder of Tsai’s term in office, he added.
When Tsai was sworn in as president in 2016, she vowed to promote judicial reform and later held a national conference on judicial reform, with an aim of winning back public confidence in the judiciary, foundation internal and legal affairs committee convenor Huang Te-fu (黃德福) said.
However, surveys over the past five years have presented an “opposite” result, Huang said.
Judicial reform has “evaporated” during Tsai’s presidency, he said, urging the government to step up its reform efforts.
Instead of adopting a system in which the public participates in trials, it is more important to increase the number of judicial personnel, as having too many cases to handle could affect the quality of judgements, attorney Wang Han-hsing (王瀚興) said.
The survey was commissioned by the foundation and conducted by Taiwan Real Survey Co from April 20 to April 22. It was based on telephone interviews with 1,075 adults aged 20 or older, and had a confidence level of 95 percent and a margin of error of 2.99 percentage points, the foundation said.
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The cosponsors of a new US sanctions package targeting Russia on Thursday briefed European allies and Ukraine on the legislation and said the legislation would also have a deterrent effect on China and curb its ambitions regarding Taiwan. The bill backed by US senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal calls for a 500 percent tariff on goods imported from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other exports — targeting nations such as China and India, which account for about 70 percent of Russia’s energy trade, the bankroll of much of its war effort. Graham and Blumenthal told The Associated Press
RSS