Vice President Annette Lu (
Among the candidates, 107 were self-recommended, 63 were recommended by professional or social groups, and 18 are incumbent ombudsmen who have expressed interest in serving another six-year term in the Control Yuan. Lu added that the candidates include 170 males and 18 females.
PHOTO: CNA
The new ombudsmen recommendation panel, headed by Lu, began to accept reference letters Nov. 5 and stopped accepting referrals Nov. 24.
Judging from the number of recommendation letters received during the period, Control Yuan seats are still held in high esteem, according to Lu.
Lu also said the recommendation panel will screen all reference letters in two stages. In the preliminary stage, 60 candidates will be selected from the 188 hopefuls. In the second phase, 40 candidates will be chosen from the 60 short-listed names.
The list of 40 finalists will then be presented to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) for his reference in nominating candidates for Control Yuan seats, Lu said. Chen is expected to nominate candidates for 27 Control Yuan seats, as well as for the Control Yuan presidency and vice presidency by mid-December.
Lu said the recommendation panel will abide by the principles of openness, impartiality and fairness in choosing the finalists.
Neither the Presidential Office nor the Executive Yuan have recommended anyone, Lu stressed, adding that the president himself has also not made any recommendations.
During the news conference, Lu displayed a recommendation letter from the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) legislative caucus, suggesting that incumbent Legislative Yuan President Wang Jin-pyng (
However, Lu said, the recommendation panel will not deal with the DPP recommendation because it is the president's right to decide candidates for the Control Yuan presidency and vice presidency.
Wang, a vice chairman of the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), is seeking re-election in the Dec. 11 legislative elections and has publicly dismissed the DPP recommendation as an ill-motivated "joke." He said he has no interest in the top Control Yuan post.
According to Lu, the hopefuls include incumbent and former elected representatives, as well as retired officials, business executives, celebrities, artists, accountants, medical doctors and elite members from other professional fields.
"Among the hopefuls are many former officials and elected representatives from the pan-blue alliance of the KMT and the People First Party," Lu added.
Members of the recommendation panel include: incumbent Control Yuan President Fredrick Chien (錢復); Presidential Office Secretary-General Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌); Clement Chang (張建邦), a senior adviser to the president; Michael Hsiao (蕭新煌), a national policy adviser to the president; and Nita Ing (殷琪), chairwoman of the Taiwan High Speed Railway Co, who is also an adviser to the president.
Chien has made clear that he will retire from public service after his current tenure expires.
The new Control Yuan members will assume office on Feb. 1, 2005.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater