Hasty Appointment of Grand Justices, Legislative Yuan Cannot Shirk Responsibility — Statement by the Alliance for Monitoring Grand Justice Nominations

This morning (June 12), the Legislative Yuan passed the personnel appointment proposals for Grand Justices Lin Chun-yi, Wu Ch'en-huan, Huang Hung-hsia, and Tsai Ming-cheng by votes of 63:44, 65:41, 71:34, and 79:28, respectively (out of 112 total legislators, 109 voted). However, this personnel review can undoubtedly be ranked as one of the most perfunctory review cases in the history of the Legislative Yuan.

Ever since the Office of the President submitted the list of nominees on April 23, the Legislative Yuan repeatedly delayed scheduling the review process. It was not until last Friday (June 5) that it abruptly announced a public hearing would be held this Wednesday, followed by a review session on Thursday, and then proceeded to a direct vote today without even a review report. Ironically, during Wednesday's public hearing, a legislator even bluntly stated that the Office of the President refused to provide review materials on the grounds of "Personal Information Protection." During Thursday's review session, out of 113 legislators in the entire Yuan, only 19 registered to interpellate, and those who participated throughout the entire interpellation process could probably be counted on one hand. Under such circumstances, the Legislative Yuan actually proceeded to vote today. If this is not perfunctory, what is?

Especially during yesterday's review proceedings, when responding to legislators' interpellations, the four nominees (now Grand Justices-designate) either hid behind "what current legal systems prescribe" or invoked "public opinion trends." Apart from being hollow, their responses were extremely compliant with the stances of the interpellating legislators, utterly devoid of any pro-and-con discourse from a constitutional perspective. Such answers actually managed to win the support of a majority of legislators! Furthermore, media reports today indicated that the ruling party traded away its "abandonment of insistence on pushing for supplementary Control Yuan nominations" in order to secure the opposition party's agreement to proceed with the "Grand Justice personnel review." The Alliance strongly demands that both major ruling and opposition parties provide an explanation: Have the Grand Justice personnel cases been used as bargaining chips in political deals, disregarding the rights and interests of the people?

Despite the dereliction of duty by the Legislative Yuan in hastily passing the appointment proposals of the four Grand Justices through a perfunctory review process, the Alliance will still proceed according to its original plan to conduct a substantive evaluation of the four nominees. We will publish the evaluation results before the nominees assume office, serving as a basis for examining whether these four "Grand Justices" can properly fulfill their duties in the future.

Finally, the Alliance once again calls for the fact that Grand Justices, serving the vital function of safeguarding constitutional governance, should have an open, transparent, prudent, and rigorous process from nomination, review, to voting. Prior to nomination, the President must concretely explain the nominees' contributions from a constitutional perspective. Before the review, nominees must also answer questionnaires formulated by the parliament and submit relevant materials. Meanwhile, the Legislative Yuan should also announce the review schedule in advance to allow nominees sufficient preparation time. In October next year (2016), another five Grand Justices will step down. Whether the hasty voting farce will continue to play out depends entirely on the wisdom of the people during the general election.

Alliance Members

Taiwan Law Society
Hsinshe
Taiwan Association for Human Rights
Taiwan Support Democracy Platform
Citizen's Action Constitutional Coalition
Association for Innocence Project Taiwan
Citizen's Watch Taiwan
Judicial Reform Foundation

Press Contact

Kao Jung-chih, Attorney-at-Law, Executive Director of JRF, 02-2523-1178