Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Brian Hioe
A DEMONSTRATION WAS held today on Jinan Road in front of the Legislative Yuan against the pan-Blue camp’s efforts to freeze the Constitutional Court. According to organizers, by shortly before 8 PM, over 1,000 were in attendance.
The primary organizer of the event was the Judicial Reform Foundation, along with an alliance of other civic groups. This included Covenants Watch, Citizen Congress Watch, the Economic Democracy Union, Taiwan Association for Human Rights, and other groups, a range of groups representing Taiwanese civil society as a whole. The demonstration followed suit from a rally last weekend about the same issue that brought out several hundred lawyers, along with two thousand supporters.
Photo credit: Brian Hioe
The KMT currently seeks to advance a proposal that would require the Constitutional Court to have fifteen justices and that ten justices need to be in agreement for rulings to be made.
The Constitutional Court currently has eight justices, seeing as seven retired after their terms ended in October. As the KMT is expected to try and block all appointments that the Lai administration raises, the Constitutional Court would be unable to make rulings if the proposal passes due to an insufficient number of justices.
The aim of the proposal, then, is to impede the ability of the Constitutional Court to block the KMT’s current actions in the legislature through constitutional interpretations. Starting earlier this year, through an attempt to expand legislative powers, the KMT has sought to strip powers away from other branches of government such as the judiciary and executive, and shift them to the legislature. But the Constitutional Court proves a particular obstacle for the KMT, seeing as it can move to strike down legislative actions of the KMT as constitutional–as occurred with the powers sought by the KMT, which were struck down by the Constitutional Court last month, The KMT’s attempted legislative power grab prompted the series of protests earlier this year known as the Bluebird Movement.
Photo credit: Brian Hioe
The proposal was raised by KMT legislator Weng Hsiao-ling. On other occasions, Weng has alarmed with her cross-strait stances, claiming that Taiwanese are Chinese, and aiming to remove penalties for treason for government officials or members of the military that publicly express loyalty to China. Consequently, it may not be surprising that her actions have sparked mobilization from Taiwanese civil society, even if this is not yet on the same scale as the Bluebird Movement half a year ago.
The KMT has been criticized for scheduling discussion of nominees to the Constitutional Court until late in the current legislative session to try and prevent any new appointments from being made. Likewise, Weng has been criticized for claiming that the proposal is to ensure fair rulings in the Constitutional Court instead of one-party dominance, but she is married to a former justice, and she never had any issue with the current system of appointments and majority rulings when he sat in the Constitutional Court. Taiwan’s Constitutional Court was also compared to other judicial systems, in that other countries have fewer justices than Taiwan’s Constitutional Court or have systems to allow rulings to continue to take place even without a full bench.
Photo credit: Brian Hioe
To this extent, many speakers spoke of the role that the Constitutional Court can play in maintaining the checks and balances of government, as well as judgments in favor of human rights that the Constitutional Court has made in the past. Weng’s actions and those of the KMT were criticized from a number of perspectives, including Indigenous perspectives critical of the colonial logic of the KMT party caucus on laws pertaining to Indigenous legal status, the lack of concern with human rights laws by the KMT, or how the KMT has disregarded environmental protections in its actions. Speakers also criticized how the KMT has dismissed protests against its actions as simply stirred up by the KMT. Hong Kong speakers brought up the recent situation there in comparison to Taiwan.
Musical performances, as well as performance art, also took place during the demonstration. A number of individuals carried QR codes for recall petitions against KMT legislators, including Weng, Hsu Chiao-hsin, Lee Yen-hsiu, and others.
Photo credit: Brian Hioe
It is to be seen whether protests against the KMT’s efforts to freeze the Constitutional Court lead to demonstrations on the scale of earlier this year, which were likely also impacted by the presidential transition of power, and so could grow to a scale not seen in the ten years since the 2014 Sunflower Movement. Other recent actions of the KMT, such as efforts to block the national budget, raise the benchmarks needed to hold recalls, and speed up the naturalization period for Chinese spouses could also provoke outrage.