Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) approved Minister of Labor Pan Shih-wei’s (潘世偉) resignation last night, hours after Pan offered to step down during an early-morning telephone call to Jiang amid rumors of an extramarital affair.
Executive Yuan spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun (孫立群) said Jiang spoke again by phone to Pan in the afternoon and approved his resignation in the evening.
Deputy Minister of Labor Hau Feng-ming (郝鳳鳴) will take over for Pan until a new minister is appointed, Sun said.
Photo: CNA
Pan’s resignation came just a day after Next Magazine reported that he had made three nighttime visits to his female secretary in a week earlier this month.
In its latest issue, the Chinese-language magazine said Pan had also taken his secretary on official foreign visits with business-class airline tickets that had been paid for with government funds.
Pan had been quick on Wednesday to refute the accusation of an affair, while his secretary issued a statement saying she would take legal action against the magazine.
Yesterday afternoon it appeared to be business as usual for the 58-year-old Pan, who had served as head of the Council of Labor Affairs since October 2012 and oversaw its transformation into the ministry earlier this year.
The ministry yesterday made public a recording made by Pan’s wife, who is on a vacation in France with their son, in which she said she was surprised to hear of his resignation and that she fully trusts him.
“[Pan] always tells me where he goes and I know about his meetings with the secretary. I know [her] personally as well,” his wife said.
The National Alliance for Workers of Closed Factories (全國關廠工人連線), who had demanded that Pan step down over his handling of several cases concerning the exploitation of workers and what it says are deteriorating working conditions, criticized Pan’s decision.
“Politicians are supposed to step down for bad policies,” not for their deeds in the private sphere, the group said in a Facebook post.
Pan is the second public official to resign over an alleged affair exposed by Next Magazine in the past three months. It published a story about former minister without portfolio Chen Shi-shuenn (陳希舜) in April that claimed the married Chen had made several visits to a female professor’s residence in 10 days.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan and CNA
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese