Taiwan court upholds ruling against Ma’s bid to expel speaker Wang Jin-pyng

Kuomintang leader and Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou's bid to oust his rival Wang Jin-pyng as speaker of the island's legislature has failed again, with the high court yesterday upholding a lower court's decision to allow Wang to stay put for now.

The decision deals a further blow to Ma, whose feud with Wang has triggered Taiwan's biggest political crisis since Ma became president in 2008.

The Taiwan High Court rejected an appeal by Ma's Kuomintang party against a court's decision on September 13 to grant Wang's request for a provisional injunction against the KMT's decision to revoke his party membership.

"The [revocation] would result in irreparable damage to [Wang] if in the future the decision was found unreasonable but he had already lost his post," said Hung Kuang-tsan, spokesman for the high court.

Grafie Li, a presidential office spokeswoman, said Ma would respect the ruling but would not compromise on the decision to revoke Wang's KMT membership, the Central News Agency reported.

KMT lawyers said they would appeal to the Supreme Court, but a group of KMT legislators led by Lo Shu-lei called on Ma to halt the appeal, saying he should focus instead on the island's sagging economy.

"Heed the voice of the cab driver who committed suicide," said Lo, referring to a suicide note left by a driver who killed himself out of anger over the fight between Ma and Wang and the failure of the Ma government to improve the island's economy.

Ma has risked being impeached or recalled as president, with the opposition Democratic Progressive Party vowing to initiate such action on the grounds Ma is behind an order to government investigators to eavesdrop on opponents in the legislature.

Ma in early September accused Wang of using his influence to interfere in the prosecution of a breach-of-trust case involving Ker Chien-ming, the DPP legislative caucus whip. Calling it the "most serious infringement of Taiwan judicial independence", and citing a wiretap transcript provided by Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming, Ma said he could not turn a blind eye to what he described as illegal lobbying involving the head of the legislature and the opposition legislative caucus' whip.

Days later he demanded that the KMT disciplinary committee take action to oust Wang, in the hope of effectively stripping him of his post as speaker. Without party membership, Wang - who was appointed by the KMT as a legislator at large rather than winning a constituency election - would also lose his speaker post.

The feud has sparked a scandal over what the DPP and even some KMT lawmakers have called the "random and illegal" wiretapping of politicians.

Huang yesterday told the legislature that government investigators had intended to tap the phone of an aide to the DPP's Ker when they accidentally tapped one of the legislature's telephone switchboards. Investigators earlier admitted it had been a mistake to wiretap the 12-year-old daughter of a prosecutor.

DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang said Ma and his government had violated the constitution and the law. "For this Ma should take responsibility and resign," Su told a news conference. He said if Ma failed to do so, his party would initiate an impeachment or recall motion to unseat Ma, or launch a vote of no confidence to overturn the cabinet.

Asked if he was aware that winning a vote of no confidence would mean the dissolution of the legislature, Su said he would welcome that because he believed the KMT would lose its majority.