President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is facing sharp criticism for his decision to appoint Chou Chih-jung (周志榮) as the first head of the Agency Against Corruption (AAC), an independent anti-corruption body established on Thursday.
Critics say Chou, a prosecutor, is actively involved in politics and is unfit to lead an agency aimed at deterring civil servants, including public officials, from engaging in corrupt activities.
Chou was widely rumored to have been involved in leaking to the press information about a probe into campaign contributions given to then-Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) during the 2008 presidential election, in a move that critics say may have affected the election outcome.
The allegations against Hsieh later turned out to be unfounded.
“His motive for doing this was clear,” DPP lawyer Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said at a press conference yesterday. “We are concerned that a prosecutor so heavily involved in political activities would turn the new agency into a political tool.”
There has also been dissatisfaction with the appointment of Yang Shih-chin (楊石金), the former head of Taipei City’s Department of Ethics, as deputy head of the AAC.
Yang was involved in the Taipei International Flora Expo scandal last year, when local DPP councilors accused organizers and the city government of overpaying contractors by as much as 30 times market prices. The scandal saw prosecutors raid the municipal government building and arrest one official.
Prosecutors had voiced public concerns at that time that the ethics department was covering up for other civic officials connected to the controversy.
“I don’t think anybody at the time could have imagined that Yang would instead be promoted to deputy head of the AAC,” Chou said, adding that the former director-general also had a dismal record in processing public complaints.
Information compiled by the DPP shows that 481 public complaints had been given to the Taipei City Ethics Department since February 2007, but only nine were pursued in court, leading to a “efficiency rate of only 1.8 percent,” DPP spokesperson Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said.
Deputy Minister of Justice Chen Shou-huang (陳守煌) yesterday said the allegations so far have not been found to be true. Chen welcomed Hsu to provide the ministry with whatever information he has.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY YANG KUO-WEN
Right-wing political scientist Laura Fernandez on Sunday won Costa Rica’s presidential election by a landslide, after promising to crack down on rising violence linked to the cocaine trade. Fernandez’s nearest rival, economist Alvaro Ramos, conceded defeat as results showed the ruling party far exceeding the threshold of 40 percent needed to avoid a runoff. With 94 percent of polling stations counted, the political heir of outgoing Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves had captured 48.3 percent of the vote compared with Ramos’ 33.4 percent, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said. As soon as the first results were announced, members of Fernandez’s Sovereign People’s Party
MORE RESPONSIBILITY: Draftees would be expected to fight alongside professional soldiers, likely requiring the transformation of some training brigades into combat units The armed forces are to start incorporating new conscripts into combined arms brigades this year to enhance combat readiness, the Executive Yuan’s latest policy report said. The new policy would affect Taiwanese men entering the military for their compulsory service, which was extended to one year under reforms by then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in 2022. The conscripts would be trained to operate machine guns, uncrewed aerial vehicles, anti-tank guided missile launchers and Stinger air defense systems, the report said, adding that the basic training would be lengthened to eight weeks. After basic training, conscripts would be sorted into infantry battalions that would take
GROWING AMBITIONS: The scale and tempo of the operations show that the Strait has become the core theater for China to expand its security interests, the report said Chinese military aircraft incursions around Taiwan have surged nearly 15-fold over the past five years, according to a report released yesterday by the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of China Affairs. Sorties in the Taiwan Strait were previously irregular, totaling 380 in 2020, but have since evolved into routine operations, the report showed. “This demonstrates that the Taiwan Strait has become both the starting point and testing ground for Beijing’s expansionist ambitions,” it said. Driven by military expansionism, China is systematically pursuing actions aimed at altering the regional “status quo,” the department said, adding that Taiwan represents the most critical link in China’s
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS