Eleven Control Yuan candidates nominated by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), from a list of 29 that has been described by opposition parties as “the worst roster in history,” were voted down by the legislature yesterday.
The vote took place after a blockade by opposition parties in the early morning and subsequent cross-party negotiation led the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to agree not to enforce party discipline on how its legislators voted.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan Solidarity Union lawmakers arrived on the legislature’s floor an hour before the meeting started and occupied the legislative speaker’s podium, protesting the ruling party’s resolution made on Monday, despite dissent from some KMT members, that the party as a whole would “give full support to all of the nominees.”
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
During the blockade, the opposition also accused some of the nominees of influence-peddling before the start of the second legislative extraordinary session that had been scheduled to execute the confirmation vote.
The KMT caucus had concluded on Monday that party discipline would be used if any of its legislators voted otherwise, and refused to promise not to supervise how its legislators voted by requiring them to show their marked ballots.
The opposition’s blockade did not end until just before noon yesterday, when the ruling party backed down and agreed to have the voting booths and boxes placed in a way that the voters would not be monitored. The KMT also agreed to allow the legislators to vote one by one, rather than in groups.
Chang Po-ya (張博雅) and Sun Ta-chuan’s (孫大川) nominations were approved for the positions of president and vice-president of the Control Yuan respectively.
Chang received 57 yes votes, 36 no votes and 14 invalid votes, while Sun had 60 yes votes, 33 no votes and 14 invalid votes.
The two are to begin their six-year terms on Friday.
The legislature conducted the confirmation vote for the rest of the nominees in the afternoon. After hours of voting and counting, it was revealed that 11 had failed to secure the required 57 votes, which is one more vote than half of the total 112 legislative seats.
Those who were voted down include former Food and Drug Administration director-general Kang Jaw-jou (康照洲), to whom the Control Yuan had issued at least 19 corrective measures concerning food safety during his term as head of the agency, former Public Construction Commission minister Fan Liang-shiow (范良銹), who had also several times been issued corrective directives by the Control Yuan, and Shih Hung-chih (施鴻志), a retired professor of urban planning with a record of handling controversial land expropriations.
National Medical University professor Wang Hui-po (王惠珀), Lee Ping-nan (李炳南) and Yu Teng-fang (余騰芳), who were not in the recommendation list at first, or voted out by the recommendation team then chosen by the president, were among the ousted.
An Emirates flight from Dubai arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday afternoon, the first service of the airline since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on Saturday. Flight EK366 took off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 3:51am yesterday and landed at 4:02pm before taxiing to the airport’s D6 gate at Terminal 2 at 4:08pm, data from the airport and FlightAware, a global flight tracking site, showed. Of the 501 passengers on the flight, 275 were Taiwanese, including 96 group tour travelers, the data showed. Tourism Administration Deputy Director-General Huang He-ting (黃荷婷) greeted Taiwanese passengers at the airport and
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