| Last week, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) five grand justice nominees were unanimously approved by the legislature. Upon closer examination, every step of the process, — from the nominations by Ma to the legislative review and approval — was performed in a slipshod manner. Appointing five grand justices with eight-year terms so hastily is very unfavorable to the nation’s constitutional development and human rights protection.
The government followed old routines and did not improve upon the nomination and approval procedures. Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) presided over a committee to recommend several candidates from Ma’s nominees. The Presidential Office only had rough information about all the possible candidates, and it even failed to thoroughly review and check the resumes and profiles of each candidate.
Not only did the committee fail to collect detailed information about the candidates, but Ma also seems not to have obtained a deeper understanding of each nominee.
It appears Ma wanted to take advantage of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) legislative majority so that his grand justice nominees could be quickly approved. Just as expected, the legislature was very cooperative and completed the entire procedure very quickly. The haste of these appointments deprived all civic groups and individuals of the opportunity to review and express their opinions about each nominee. This is a manifestation of an authoritarian regime that violates the principles of democracy.
By the time the Presidential Office submitted the official list of Ma’s nominees to the legislature, the five had basically already passed the review. Procedurally and practically, the KMT-controlled legislature intended to go easy on them.
The legislature only arranged one meeting to review all five nominations, and because of a lack of quorum, the meeting had to be postponed for an hour. Each nominee received less than an hour of questioning on average. Moreover, as all five nominees were questioned together and the lawmakers only asked questions to certain nominees, it was hard for the other nominees to express their viewpoints on various issues such as constitutional politics, human rights and legislation.
After observing the process, the Civic Alliance to Supervise Nominations for Grand Justices said in its report that the KMT legislators performed very poorly during the review meeting, with 55 percent of questions deviating from the topic at hand, 54 percent lacking substance and 46 percent being substandard.
The nominees’ performance in answering the questions in this slipshod question-and-answer session exposed serious problems, too. For example, all the nominees showed a lack of understanding of gender mainstreaming and they seemed to lack any substantial understanding of the definition of sexual harassment.
In addition, some nominees chose to use roundabout and unclear wording in their replies to questions regarding conflicts of interest, implying they had no intention of avoiding such situations.
Two days after the committee hastily finished the review, the nominations were submitted to the legislature for approval. Despite a boycott of the vote by Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers, the KMT majority followed the party whip and gave a green light to each nominee.
We have no confidence in any of the grand justices appointed through such a careless, slipshod process.
Chiu Hei-yuan is chairman of the Civic Alliance to Supervise Nominations for Grand Justices.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG | 