Chuang Kuo-rong (莊國榮), former Ministry of Education secretary-general, said yesterday he would show his penitence for insulting President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and his family by staging a hunger strike in front of the Presidential Office starting July 1.
Chuang caused a storm of controversy during the presidential campaign in March, when he used a profanity to imply Ma’s late father had a salacious relationship with his goddaughter.
When then Democratic Progressive Party candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) suffered a landslide defeat, some people blamed Chuang and his caustic remarks for turning voters away. Chuang resigned from the ministry and has since returned to his post as assistant professor at National Chengchi University (NCCU).
However, the school decided on Thursday not to renew his contract, saying his behavior during the election period had disgraced the institution.
“There was no need for the school to use such superficial standards to rob someone of their right to work,” he told a press conference yesterday.
Mocking Ma as the “emperor,” Chuang said: “I thought it was permissible to criticize a president of a democratic country, but I didn’t know that Taiwan’s presidents such as Chiang Kai-Shek (蔣介石), Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) and Ma were semi-deities, like the Japanese royal family.”
Given which, he said he decided to make his apology by staging a hunger strike starting next month, until Ma and his family forgave him.
Upon learning of his plans, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday ridiculed Chuang, telling him not to act irrationally if he wanted to return to the educational field.
“I think Chuang should go see a psychiatrist and get some counseling,” KMT Leigslator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said when asked for comment.
KMT legislators Chiu Yi (邱毅) and Justin Chou (周守訓) both said that Chuang was damaging his career prospects.
“If he continues making a fool out of himself like this, I am afraid that he will say goodbye to his teaching career,” Chiu said.
In related news, another pan-green official might be forced to terminate his teaching post at NCCU, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported yesterday.
Taiwan representative to the US Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), who taught at NCCU’s Institute of International Relations prior to his governmental post, was rumored to have been rejected by the school when he applied to return to the institute, the report said.
Wu tendered his resignation on May 20 upon the inauguration of the KMT administration.
The Liberty Times report said that Wu’s application was approved two out of three times by the school review committee, but was rejected at the final review.
The institute denied that the school had rejected Wu’s application but rather, that it had decided to withdraw Wu’s application because someone on the committee had informed the institute that Wu was not eligible to resume his teaching post, because he had not published any academic papers in the last five years as required by the school, the report said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
CHIPMAKING INVESTMENT: J.W. Kuo told legislators that Department of Investment Review approval would be needed were Washington to seek a TSMC board seat Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said he received information about a possible US government investment in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and an assessment of the possible effect on the firm requires further discussion. If the US were to invest in TSMC, the plan would need to be reviewed by the Department of Investment Review, Kuo told reporters ahead of a hearing of the legislature’s Economics Committee. Kuo’s remarks came after US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said that the US government is looking into the federal government taking equity stakes in computer chip manufacturers that
NORTHERN STRIKE: Taiwanese military personnel have been training ‘in strategic and tactical battle operations’ in Michigan, a former US diplomat said More than 500 Taiwanese troops participated in this year’s Northern Strike military exercise held at Lake Michigan by the US, a Pentagon-run news outlet reported yesterday. The Michigan National Guard-sponsored drill involved 7,500 military personnel from 36 nations and territories around the world, the Stars and Stripes said. This year’s edition of Northern Strike, which concluded on Sunday, simulated a war in the Indo-Pacific region in a departure from its traditional European focus, it said. The change indicated a greater shift in the US armed forces’ attention to a potential conflict in Asia, it added. Citing a briefing by a Michigan National Guard senior
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
ENHANCED SECURITY: A Japanese report said that the MOU is about the sharing of information on foreign nationals entering Japan from Taiwan in the event of an emergency The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday confirmed that Taiwan and Japan had signed an agreement to promote information exchanges and cooperation on border management, although it did not disclose more details on the pact. Ministry spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) said the ministry is happy to see that the two nations continue to enhance cooperation on immigration control, in particular because Taiwan and Japan “share a deep friendship and frequent people-to-people exchanges.” “Last year, more than 7.32 million visits were made between the two countries, making it even more crucial for both sides to work closer on immigration and border control,” he said. Hsiao
RSS