More than 9,000 petitions are sitting in the offices of the Control Yuan, the nation's highest watchdog body, which has not functioned since Feb. 1 because opposition legislators have refused to endorse President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) nominees for Control Yuan members.
Control Yuan Secretary-General Tu Shan-liang (杜善良) said a total of 9,410 petitions have accumulated at the watchdog body since the previous Control Yuan members finished their terms at the end of January.
Tu said the cases needed to be investigated so that the rights of the petitioners were not further compromised. He described the memberless Control Yuan as an "unprecedented and strange phenomenon in the nation's constitutional history."
But he doubted that the opposition party caucuses, who hold a slight majority in the legislature, would approve the nominations submitted by Chen even if an extra legislative session were to be held next month.
Chen first submitted the names of nominees in January for the previous legislature's approval, but opposition legislators refused to approve them, maintaining that most of them were not up to public expectations. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the People First Party, which as an alliance retained a majority in the new legislature, asked Chen to submit a new list of nominees on the grounds that his original list for the previous legislature was invalid.
Chen then resubmitted the same list, which opposition legislators are refusing to approve.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
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