Party Responses｜Kuomintang's Response to the Seven Questions on Judicial Reform

1. To protect the right to vote for inmates, do political parties support establishing polling stations and transfer voting within correctional institutions so that all inmates can vote inside these facilities?

Upholding democratic values and maintaining human rights has been the consistent stance of our party. If the basic rights of inmates have not been deprived by law, they should naturally be fully guaranteed. However, a ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court this year stated that correctional institutions are closed spaces unable to comply with current voting regulations, which would affect the credibility of elections, thereby dismissing an inmate's application to set up a polling station in prison. Such deprivation of citizens' right to political participation due to the administrative agency's negligence and inaction seriously violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is absurd and unacceptable.
Regarding this issue, the Kuomintang legislative caucus has repeatedly proposed primary resolutions during budget reviews, demanding that administrative agencies accelerate research and improvements on this matter, and has also repeatedly proposed absentee voting to concretely protect citizens' right to political participation. However, all these efforts have been blocked by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government wielding its majority advantage. In the future, the Kuomintang will continue to promote relevant legislative amendments to truly protect citizens' right to political participation.

2. To eradicate torture and establish a National Preventive Mechanism against torture, do political parties commit to supporting the passage of the Enforcement Act of the Convention against Torture in the Legislative Yuan within one year after taking office?

The Enforcement Act of the Convention against Torture aims to protect everyone's right, under any circumstances and in any place, to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. Under the governance of the DPP government, which claims to place the highest value on human rights, incidents of torture and abuse of prisoners actually broke out inside a prison, resulting in a correction by the Control Yuan—truly disappointing.
Eradicating torture is a key indicator of a nation's progress and the safeguarding of fundamental human rights. To prevent similar situations from recurring, the Kuomintang will continue to promote the legalization process of related laws to complete our country's human rights protection.

3. To prevent data breaches of personal information collected and managed in state information databases, do political parties commit to supporting a comprehensive revision of the Personal Data Protection Act within one year after taking office? Regarding data breaches of personal information collected and managed by government agencies, should an independent external investigative unit be established to clarify the facts and build a complete review and prevention mechanism?

Information security is an issue that requires high attention. Article 18 of the Personal Data Protection Act stipulates that public agencies holding personal data shall designate specific personnel to maintain it and prevent personal data from being stolen, altered, damaged, destroyed, or leaked. However, there are no penalties for public agencies that violate this article. On May 16, 2023, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment proposed by the Executive Yuan, increasing penalties for "non-public agencies" violating the Personal Data Protection Act and establishing an independent supervisory authority for personal data protection. However, it failed to regulate public agencies at the same time, making the legislative amendment only half-hearted, and even the preparation office for the Personal Data Protection Commission was delayed until December 5, 2023, to be established, clearly falling short of public expectations.
In the future, the Kuomintang will draw on the experiences of other countries to propose amendments to improve regulations for public agencies, accelerate the independent preparation progress of the Personal Data Protection Commission, strengthen its independence, review government agencies' handling mechanisms for information security incidents, and correct the mindset when facing information security issues—rather than shifting blame and concealing, they should fully acknowledge and effectively carry out damage control to achieve the goal of information security defense.

4. To build a clean government and protect whistleblowers, do political parties commit to supporting the passage of the Whistleblower Protection Act in the Legislative Yuan within one year after taking office? Regarding whistleblowers who have not been protected in the past, do you support providing remedial measures?

The enactment of the Whistleblower Protection Act is intended to provide comprehensive protection for whistleblowers, granting appropriate protection and rewards to encourage individuals who are aware of corrupt practices to courageously come forward and expose major illegal activities, bringing hidden illegal crimes within organizations to light. The enactment of this act helps our country build a clean and honest government and a regular operating environment from top to bottom, from the public sector to the private sector. Furthermore, in the formulation of laws across various nations, many list whistleblower protection as dedicated legislation, such as in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and South Korea, to demonstrate the importance attached to whistleblower protection.
However, after eight years of DPP rule, this act has been "under study" for eight years, and to this day, no executive version has been submitted to the Legislative Yuan—clearly a stalling tactic. The Kuomintang legislative caucus has held press conferences multiple times and passed budget primary resolutions demanding the Executive Yuan to quickly draft a version and submit it to the Legislative Yuan for deliberation, but unfortunately, there has been no news to this day. This bill is also a goal of concern for presidential candidate Hou You-ih (Hou Yu-ih). In the future, the Kuomintang will continue to promote relevant legislative amendments to advance the realization of a clean and efficient government.

5. To improve the shortcomings in forensic science—which currently lacks unified standards and procedures—and to prevent wrongful convictions, do political parties support the prompt establishment of a "National Forensic Science Commission"?

In modern society, criminal methods are constantly evolving, and the methods for investigating criminal cases should be advanced based on a scientific spirit, while upholding principles of fairness and impartiality, to help prevent wrongful convictions or vindicate miscarriage of justice cases. Many major wrongful convictions in the past, such as the Chiang Kuo-ching (Chiang Kuo-ch'ing), Su Chien-hsu (Su Chien-hsü), and Hsu Tzu-chiang (Hsu Tzu-chiang) cases, all resulted from inferior criminal forensic reports leading to wrongful imprisonment. In the 21st century, with advanced technology, such situations should truly no longer occur.
Receiving a fair trial is a fundamental right that everyone should enjoy. Whether a trial can be conducted fairly depends on objective forensic reports as its core component, which concerns the basic rights of the people. An independent and transcendent forensic unit is indeed necessary, and cross-party joint efforts should be made to completely eradicate the production of wrongful imprisonment. In the future, the Kuomintang will propose relevant reforms toward improving forensic science to safeguard the people's right to a fair trial.

6. To address the issue of improper police law enforcement, reform police education, and enhance law enforcement efficiency and quality, do political parties support the establishment of a "Police Special Project and Performance Management Commission" to establish a rational and scientific performance system?

Since the DPP took office, it has abused resources for massive internal propaganda, not even sparing local governance. Last year, the Kaohsiung City Government Police Department required police officers to "frequently publish news on newly cracked criminal cases," causing frontline police officers to rush about exhaustively, solely to help superiors gain media exposure to facilitate propaganda. Such performance chaos has severely caused distress to frontline police officers.
During the 2017 National Congress on Judicial Reform, a resolution was passed demanding the establishment of a "Police Special Project and Performance Management Commission" under the Ministry of the Interior, with members comprising more than half of external committee members, to construct a rational performance system (including publicizing the calculation standards, methods, and reasons for performance evaluation items). However, this resolution was ultimately vetoed by the National Police Agency.
Regarding the future direction of improvements on this issue, we should discard the mindset of those in power who whitewash and beautify performance for massive internal propaganda on behalf of the ruling party. In the future, our party will continue to guard and promote the construction of reasonable and effective rules and systems for the management of police rights and performance.

7. To systematically prevent and reduce misconduct by judges and prosecutors, do political parties support amending the Judges Act to strengthen the supervisory responsibility of judicial heads over their subordinate judges or prosecutors?

In recent years, major disciplinary scandals such as the Shih Mu-chin (Shih Mu-ch'in) case and allegations of sexual harassment by former Disciplinary Court President Li Po-tao (Li Po-tao) broke out only after being exposed by the media, following which the Judicial Yuan stated it would conduct internal investigations. However, the exposure of these related events has severely damaged the judicial image, and the investigation results were handled leniently, allowing Li Po-tao to even take early retirement with honors. The Judicial Reform Foundation made a bitter appeal at the time that the Judges Act and the Three Gender Equality Acts should be amended to prevent similar situations from happening. Yet the DPP government still only dealt with the Three Gender Equality Acts while ignoring the fact that the Judges Act must be amended. In the future, the Kuomintang will continue to promote the establishment of a comprehensive evaluation mechanism for judges and prosecutors to improve the current shortcomings of insufficient external supervision. In addition, it will promote the establishment of a new Special Investigation Division to investigate major corruption cases involving high-ranking officials such as the presidents of the Five Yuans and legislators, in order to defend judicial independence and prevent intervention by specific political party political forces.