“SEVERE DAMAGE”
“As long as President Lai is willing to respect the majority party in parliament and properly negotiate, can’t you find two justices without ‘green ideology’?” KMT lawmaker Lo Chih-chiang said Friday, referring to the DPP’s party colour.
But Premier Cho Jung-tai, who was appointed by Lai, warned on Thursday that the changes could inflict “the most severe damage” to the island’s constitutional system and “paralyse” the court.
The amended Bill will be sent to Lai for signing into law, but some legal experts expect it to be challenged in the Constitutional Court before it takes effect.
“In my opinion that’s the best constitutional way to stop this tragedy,” Lin Chien-chih, a research professor at Academia Sinica and an expert on constitutional law, told AFP on Friday.
Huang Horng-shya, who previously served on the Constitutional Court, told foreign journalists on Thursday that the changes were “without justificaton” and “unconstitutional”.
Lai’s DPP lost its parliamentary majority in the January 2024 elections that swept him into office, and has struggled to advance its agenda.
Critics of all political stripes say Lai bears some responsibility for the chaos in the parliament after failing to negotiate with the opposition.
The other disputed Bills passed by the opposition bloc in December include a revision to the Public Officials Election and Recall Act to raise the threshold for removing elected officials, setting off tit-for-tat threats by some DPP and KMT legislators to launch recall campaigns.
Another reduces the central government’s tax revenue allocation, which the government says could put the national security and defence funding at risk.
Last year, reform Bills expanding parliament’s powers pushed by the opposition sparked brawls among lawmakers and massive street demonstrations.
In October, Taiwan’s Constitutional Court struck out the most controversial sections of the law, delivering a partial victory to the DPP.
