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Justice minister
queries legality of legislative motion
By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff reporter, with CNA
Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming,
left, and Minister of Justice Lo Ying-shay present a report at the legislature
on Monday on the activities of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special
Investigation Division.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Minister of Justice Lo Ying-shay (羅瑩雪)
yesterday said that the resolution adopted on Monday by a legislative committee
that all cases being probed by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office Special
Investigation Division (SID) be suspended and the division not investigate any
new cases was “legitimately questionable.”
“This was a serious matter” and thus “was not for me to decide,” Lo said in
response to media queries on whether the ministry would follow the resolution.
The resolution would destroy the judicial system because the SID is an
legitimate institution based on the Organic Act of Court Organization (法院組織法),
she said.
Lo said she questioned whether the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes
Committee’s resolution could override the law by ordering the SID to halt
operations.
The committee’s motion, which passed by a 4 to 3 vote, said the SID should turn
its active cases over to regular prosecutors and stop taking new cases.
The committee has nine members, but its convener, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)
Legislator Lu Hsueh-chang (呂學樟), did not vote because he can only vote in case
of a tie.
Four of the members are KMT lawmakers and four are from the opposition. KMT
Legislator Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) abstained rather than follow the party line and
vote against the motion.
Hsieh said it made sense for the SID to stop handling cases for the time being
because of the controversy over its operations.
If the SID were to handle highly sensitive cases, the results of its
investigations would not be very credible, he said.
The committee also passed a motion to set up a task force to investigate the
SID’s wiretapping activities that first exposed alleged improper lobbying by
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平).
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