Taipei Times
Date: Jan 22, 2017
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should push for a constitutional change to eliminate the Control Yuan rather than continuing to nominate new members as terms expire, civic groups said yesterday at an academic forum.

“Even though this issue has been put on the back burner, we expect a list of nominees to emerge soon, making it an important issue to consider given that both Tsai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) promised to abolish the Control Yuan,” Taipei Society head Chiou Wen-tsong (邱文聰) said, adding that his group and other participants all refused the Presidential Office’s invitation to recommend Control Yuan candidates because of their stance.

“A national human rights commission should be established, and the constitutional amendment process should be initiated to fulfill the DPP’s electoral promise to push for the Control Yuan’s abolition. There has never been a better time to make the push,” Taiwan Association for Human Rights executive board member Liu Ching-yi (劉靜怡) said, adding that current human rights work was too reliant on the goodwill of individual Control Yuan members.

The Control Yuan has long opposed the establishment of a separate human rights commission, claiming that investing a commission with investigatory and censorship powers would infringe on its own authority.    [FULL  STORY]