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Ma overstepped
boundaries: experts
HIGHER LAW: The president’s handling of the Wang
Jin-pyng matter has violated the doctrine of separation of powers and
jeopardized the constitutional order, experts said
By Wang Pei-lin and Stacy Hsu / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Amid continuing controversy over the “September political strife,” a number of
legal experts yesterday issued a joint statement accusing President Ma Ying-jeou
(馬英九) of using his status as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) chairman to
bypass the constitutional boundaries of presidential authority.
The statement, titled President Ma overstepping the constitutional red line: A
group of legal academics’ collective opinions on the president’s interference in
the self-disciplined legislature, was endorsed by a 36 legal specialists,
including National Taiwan University law professors Yen Chueh-an (顏厥安) and Chang
Wen-chen (張文貞).
“While the legitimacy of Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming’s (黃世銘) and the
Special Investigation Division’s handlings of the case of alleged illegal
lobbying brought against Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), and whether
Ma’s role in the case constitutes manipulation of the investigating agency, are
yet to be determined, Ma’s dealings with the incident have blatantly violated
the doctrine of separation of powers, and jeopardized the constitutional order
of this free and democratic country,” the statement said.
The statement accused Ma of using his power as KMT chairman to forcibly
manipulate the party into revoking Wang’s party membership and stripping him of
his status as a KMT legislator-at-large, in an effort to fulfill his ultimate
goal of having someone else lead the legislature.
Wang’s party membership was revoked on Wednesday last week by the KMT’s Central
Evaluation and Discipline Committee for his alleged illegal lobbying for
Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) in a legal matter.
Wang then filed a provisional injunction with the Taipei District Court seeking
to retain his KMT membership and rights. The court ruled in his favor on Friday.
In a move believed to have been initiated by Ma, the KMT on Monday brought the
case to a higher court, which is expected to hand down a ruling today.
The statement said that although a president was permitted to double as the
chairman of a political party, there was no such thing as “being the president
one minute and the next minute, not” while he or she was still in office.
“In other words, presidents will never be allowed to do what they are
constitutionally forbidden from doing just because they say they are acting in
their capacity as a party chairman. Otherwise, they would be able to bypass the
boundaries set for them by the Constitution simply by switching back and forth
between the two positions,” the statement said.
The statement added that maintaining legislative self-discipline was an integral
part of the principles of separation of powers, and that it should be the
mandate of the legislature to investigate and punish its members who had crossed
the moral boundaries.
“The adherence to the principle of legislative self-discipline is an indicator
of whether a nation is a constitutional democracy or a one-party totalitarian
regime,” the statement added.
While calling on the legislature’s Discipline Committee to subject the alleged
illegal lobbying case to the severest scrutiny, the statement urged Ma to
refrain from interfering in matters covered by the legislative self-discipline
principle and from encroaching on the core area of the legislature’s rights.
Ma should have avoided interfering in the KMT’s deliberations on the fate of
Wang to maintain the separation of powers, but instead he held several press
conferences calling for Wang’s removal from the legislative speakership, saying
that Wang was no longer fit to fill the position, the statement said.
Ma also made the same call at a meeting of the KMT’s disciplinary committee that
revoked Wang’s party membership, which was sufficient to prove that he had
overstepped his constitutional authority, it added.
The statement concluded by calling on members of the public to face up to the
difficult challenges facing the nation’s constitutional system, while urging
competent agencies to immediately restore the constitutional order.
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