Amendments seeking to raise the threshold for passing a constitutional interpretation passed directly to the second reading today without any objections.
The changes to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) proposed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Weng Hsiao-ling (翁曉玲) would require a two-thirds majority to pass a ruling.
Current law stipulates a simple majority of the 15-member Constitutional Court for a ruling to pass.
Photo: CNA
Another amendment proposed in the previous session by Weng would change the court’s quorum from two-thirds of presently incumbent justices to two-thirds of the full court.
With seven justices set to retire at the end of next month, the eight remaining judges would be short of the 10-member quorum stipulated by the amendment.
Critics have raised concern that the opposition could refuse to approve new appointments, effectively paralyzing the court as it is set to rule on controversial bills passed with the opposition parties’ majority.
The KMT and Taiwan People’s Party say the changes are necessary to prevent a few judges from having an outsized impact on the people’s lives.
The push also comes a week after a simple majority of a 12-member bench ruled to uphold the death penalty, but limited its application to only the most extreme cases.
Three justices had recused themselves for having previously represented death-row inmates.
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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