The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday filed malfeasance charges against five grand justices of the Constitutional Court after opposition-backed amendments to the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法) were ruled unconstitutional on Friday last week.
The legislature on Dec. 20 last year passed amendments to the act stipulating that the president shall propose supplementary nominations within two months after the number of grand justices falls below 15.
The amendments stipulate a minimum of 10 grand justices to commence constitutional deliberations and a minimum of nine grand justices in favor of an unconstitutional ruling to make it effective.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
On Friday last week, the Constitutional Court ruled that the amendments are unconstitutional and should be invalidated from the date of the ruling, as their legislation was significantly broken and against the constitutional principle of separation of powers.
KMT deputy secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥), KMT legislators Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇), Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯), Chen Ching-hui (陳菁徽), Lu Hsien-yi (盧縣一) and KMT New Taipei City Councilor Lin Kuo-chun (林國春) yesterday filed the complaint with the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
They filed suits against Constitutional Court justices Shieh Ming-yan (謝銘洋), Lu Tai-lang (呂太郎), Tsai Tsai-chen (蔡彩貞), Chen Chung-wu (陳忠五) and Greg Yo (尤伯祥).
Lin Pei-hsiang said the ruling is illegal, given that three grand justices who held different views and refused to take part in the deliberation were virtually considered “not incumbent” when the ruling was passed by the other five grand justices.
Wang said the ruling was made without enough grand justices attending the deliberation, either by the standards of the 10-
justice minimum stipulated by the amendments or two-thirds of the total number of incumbent justices based on the original version of the act.
The five justices violated Article 124 of the Criminal Code by wrongfully passing the ruling and would be punishable by a prison term from one to seven years, she said.
Hsu said the three justices with dissimilar views were nominated and approved not during the KMT administration, but during the presidency of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) when the Democratic Progressive Party held the majority in the legislature.
They took different stances simply to uphold the Constitution, she added.
Hsu also urged President William Lai (賴清德) to nominate more grand justice candidates. Opposition lawmakers have twice rejected Lai’s grand justice nominees, first in December last year and again in July, and Lai has not nominated a new set of nominees since.
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