The legislature is to vote tomorrow on a motion to reconsider the amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), a week after the Executive Yuan submitted a formal request to the legislature to reassess the amendment, whose third reading was passed on Dec. 20.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus said it would not invite Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) to give a report on the law to the legislature, as both the ruling and opposition party caucuses met this afternoon to discuss the issue.
The amendment is a political maneuver, Cho said today.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
By strictly regulating the number of grand justices on the Constitutional Court, the court would be paralyzed and unable to rule on constitutional matters, Cho said.
This would be the greatest harm done to the Constitution in history, he added.
The Executive Yuan could not accept this, he said, adding that he hopes that legislators would review the bill again and support the motion to reconsider it.
When submitting a request to President William Lai (賴清德) about requesting a new vote, the Executive Yuan’s goal was not to create opposition, but to allow legislators to discuss the matter carefully, Cho said.
Cho called on legislators to support the motion, and said that if they insist on implementing the new amendments, they would undermine the Constitution and deprive citizens of the right to seek constitutional redress.
Even if the motion fails, there is still some room for discussion on how to interpret the amendments, Minister Without Portfolio Lin Ming-hsin (林明昕) said.
Lin mentioned a judicial remedy known as the “preventive relief,” which serves as a legal tool to protect people’s rights before they are actually violated, may be proposed, but said it would be up to the Grand Justices to decide if they accept it.
The motion cannot be voted on without discussion, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus said.
The bill is important and could paralyze the judicial system, DPP caucus chief executive Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) said in a news conference at the Legislative Yuan today, questioning why the KMT passed it without discussion.
Wu also questioned the role of Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), saying that he failed to maintain neutrality in this debate by allowing the KMT to forego discussions.
The legislative and executive branches of governments should be responsible and engage in dialogue, Wu added.
Meanwhile, 90 legal experts issued a joint statement today, saying that the amendment undermines the separation of powers and hinders the ability of citizens to seek redress when their rights are infringed.
The experts expressed concern regarding the future of Taiwan’s constitutional democracy and called for legislators to return the law to its original state.
Additional reporting by Lee Wen-hsin
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS