About 200 people yesterday rallied outside the Taipei Guest House in Taipei demanding that the government respect National Taiwan University’s (NTU) autonomy, as controversy over the appointment of NTU president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) shows no signs of dying down.
“We are strongly opposed to the political interference that has obstructed the legal NTU presidential election process and prevented Kuan from taking office,” NTU School of Veterinary Medicine professor Chou Chung-hsi (周崇熙) said.
Chou led NTU students, faculty and alumni in chanting slogans such as “keep your political hands off our campus” and “we want a president.”
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
NTU political science professor Su Hung-dah (蘇宏達) said he joined the rally not because he is personally in favor of Kuan, but because his election was legal.
“The election was legitimate and the result ought to be respected by the government,” he said.
Kuan was elected on Jan. 5 to succeed Yang Pan-chyr (楊泮池), who chose not to serve another term when his first term expired in June last year.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
However, Kuan has since been accused of plagiarism and conflict of interest, which cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election process.
Members of the university’s election committee on Jan. 31 decided to uphold the election result, but the Ministry of Education was not satisfied with the selection committee’s findings and has demanded that the allegations be cleared up before it confirms Kuan’s appointment.
Ministry Department of Personnel Director Chen Kun-yuan (陳焜元) said that the election committee “has yet to answer the questions” about the conflict-of-interest allegation.
Kuan allegedly did not inform the committee that he was then an independent member of Taiwan Mobile’s board of directors.
Taiwan Mobile vice chairman Richard Tsai (蔡明興) is on the NTU election committee.
According to the committee meeting minutes from Jan. 31, members said that Kuan’s position on the board was public knowledge.
The election committee said that they were unable to determine whether the election result would have been different had they known that Kuan served in the role.
“From the meeting records, we could not determine whether the information might have influenced the election result,” Chen said. “This is a question that either the university or the election committee need to answer.”
Meanwhile, other university students, faculty and alumni have criticized the selection committee for playing down the allegations against Kuan.
A petition initiated by NTU Affairs Council representatives has reached the signature threshold to demand that the council call a special meeting to investigate the dispute, pending a response from the University’s Office of the Secretariat.
Chen said the ministry would pay close attention to how the Affairs Council handles the issue.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS