To refute rumors that he would be appointed as Premier Frank Hsieh's (
Yen, a former finance minister appointed as the country's first permanent representative to the WTO in 2002, said in an interview with the Central News Agency that "top government officials" approved his retirement proposal last month.
Noting that widespread speculation he was going to become the vice premier had forced him to disclose his retirement plan earlier than he would like to, Yen said he began considering retirement three months ago.
Media reports said that Hsieh has been considering choosing either Yen or Wu Rong-i (
Mere Speculation
Hsieh said neither Yen nor Wu were among the potential candidates and Wu dismissed the reports as mere speculation.
The reports said Yen always wanted to come back to Taipei because his wife could not move to Geneva with him.
Dedicated to a civil service career for more than three decades, the 57-year-old Yen explained that he would continue serving Taiwan in other ways after his departure.
"My family support my decision. I decided to retire three months ago and informed my superiors of the decision when I returned to Taipei to attend the conferences in January," Yen said.
The representative said that according to the government's practice, he was not supposed to reveal his retirement plans before his superiors announced it.
"However, in order to avoid unnecessary trouble and refute the rumors, I had no choice but to unveil my plan and to leave my civil service career," said Yen.
Yen, whose work was highly praised for the financial reform he launched as finance minister, was frequently named when the government went through personnel reshuffling among high-ranking officials.
University of Wisconsin Law School invited Yen to be a lecturer in international trade law five years ago, and has contacted him again recently, asking about his intentions regarding the job.
Academia a Possibility
"International trade law is my favorite subject? I can do a lot of things in academia," said Yen, who wanted to leave Geneva, where the country's representative office at the WTO is based, in March or April.
"When I will be able to leave depends on when my successor will be appointed," he said.
It remains unclear who will take over Yen's post.
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
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
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