All seven of President Lai Ching-te's justice nominees have failed to gain support from a majority of legislators, leaving the Constitutional Court half empty. The main opposition Kuomintang lawmakers voted against all nominees, while the ruling Democratic Progressive Party supported all of the president's nominees except Liu Ching-yi, who only received votes from the Taiwan People's Party.
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00:00We begin with the latest in the legislature. In a vote this morning, lawmakers failed to confirm
00:05any of seven justices nominated for Taiwan's top court by President Lai Ching-de. The court will
00:11remain with only eight of 15 seats filled, potentially paralyzing the court following
00:16controversial changes to the law passed last week. Our reporter Tiffany Wong is following this story
00:22for us live at the legislature. Tiffany, can you tell us about the results here today?
00:28Hi Rees. Well, it's been quite the turn of events here today. This morning, we were expecting one
00:34of the nominees to be approved by the legislature, but it turns out that none of them have gone
00:40through. Now this morning, the smaller opposition Taiwan People's Party said that they would throw
00:46their support behind one of the nominees, leaving that nominee unclear. We were expecting the ruling
00:54Democratic Progressive Party to support all of the nominees in line with President Lai Ching-de,
01:01who had nominated them. We were also expecting the opposition Kuomintang to reject all of them,
01:07but it turns out that the one nominee that the Taiwan People's Party supported is the one nominee
01:14that the Democratic Progressive Party has actually rejected, meaning that none of them have passed
01:19that 57 vote threshold needed to be confirmed. Now, it's unclear why the DPP has rejected Liu Jingyi,
01:28who is the head of a Graduate Institute of National Development at the country's top university,
01:34but the KMT caucus whip called this a vote of no confidence in President Lai, seeing as
01:41all seven of his nominees had been rejected by different parties. Now, these nominees had faced
01:47intense questioning in their confirmation hearings, especially by KMT and TPP lawmakers
01:54on the topic of the death penalty. The constitutional court had recently ruled limiting the scope of its
02:00use, but public opinion polls show that 80% of people in Taiwan still support the use of capital
02:07punishment, and the KMT themselves cited this as one of the reasons why they did vote against all
02:12of these nominees. And it seems like in those confirmation hearings, the nominees were unable
02:19to convince a majority of the lawmakers that they were fit to serve on this court.
02:27So there are only still eight justices sitting on the court out of a maximum 15.
02:32How could this affect the justice system going forward?
02:35Well, for now, there will not be any changes. Under current rules,
02:43the constitutional court can still function without a minimum number of justices.
02:48It will just be a very small court as it is. But recent amendments that have been passed
02:54could change that. Now, these amendments have not yet been signed into law by President Lai
03:00but if they go into effect, this would require 10 justices sitting to hear court cases and nine
03:07of them to make a ruling on constitutionality. And any of those open seats would have to be filled
03:12within two months. Now, as we know, the confirmation process takes a very long time
03:20and with all seven of President Lai's nominees rejected this time, this could potentially
03:26paralyze the court if these amendments go into effect before at least two seats are filled.
03:34Now, we're unsure whether President Lai will nominate a whole new slate of nominees to the
03:40court or if he'll try to push forward some of these that were rejected today once again. But
03:46either way, it looks like it's going to be a very long battle ahead to get that court back to full
03:51capacity.