The Taiwan News reports that new legislation on eminent domain is pending in the Taiwan legislature, but if you have any visions of a benign new legal regime liberalizing the rules, forget about it. Lin Shu-yuan and Ann Chen, Farmers Say Draft Bill Fails to Address Land Expropriation Woes, Taiwan News, Central News Agency, December 13, 2011.
Hundreds of farmers who lost land to eminent domain “staged a quiet protest in front of the Legislature . . . as lawmakers were processing an amendment pertaining to government acquisition of land.” Their grievance is that the law, even as amended, unfairly favors condemnors. A professor from Shih Hsin University is quoted as explaining that the amended law still allows expropriation at will, although it requires that any land expropriation be “in the public interest.” But that, says the Professor, does not take into account public opinion of what constitutes “public interest.” The definition of “public interest” will be left entirely up to the local government. Which is not unlike our law where the determination of “public use” by a condemnor, according to our Supreme Court, is deemed “well-nigh conclusive.”
As for compensation, the new law does not allow appraisers to determine market value, and this leaves the government with the right to acquire private property at what it deems to be fair market value. It also contains no provisions for relocation assistance to displaced condemnees — it only allows allows such payments to “people of low-income groups who have no alternative place of residence.
Conclusion: the protesting farmers intend to continue their sit-in protest “until their voices are heard.” We wish them luck.