Pan-blue lawmakers yesterday requested that Premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) resign to avoid a conflict of interest as prosecutors continue their probe into the Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corp (KRTC) scandal.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Pan Wei-kang (潘維剛) called on prosecutors to investigate Hsieh's possible role in the scandal, adding that the premier should come forward and explain what he knows about it.
Pan said that while the German firm Siemens was supposed to invest NT$1 billion (US$30 million) in the construction project, she was very curious to know why it put down only NT$500 million.
She also criticized the Presidential Office's investigation report as being "full of more questions than answers" and requested further inquiry into claims that former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general Chen Che-nan (
As Hsieh was the mayor of Kaohsiung when Siemens was chosen to build the trains for the subway system, KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) said she would like to know what the relationship between Siemens and Hsieh is, as well as between Siemens and Chou Li-liang (周禮良), former director of the Kaohsiung Department of Rapid Transit Systems.
People First Party (PFP) Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (
The limit had been set to encourage the private sector to contribute to the construction of transport infrastructure by investing more than 77 percent of the funding for Kaohsiung's subway construction system.
Under these circumstances, the bidding process should have been regulated by the Government Procurement Act (
The PFP legislator asked whether Chou and Hsieh had teamed up to allow six subcontracts to circumvent the law.
Chang requested Hsieh to respond to his questions as soon as possible and step down to avoid a conflict of interest while prosecutors continue their investigation.
Chang said that he will hand over the information he has obtained to prosecutors and hope that they immediately summon Hsieh and Chou for questioning.
In related news, Deputy Secretary-General of the Presidential Office Ma Yung-cheng (
Ma was defending a report released by the office last week amid criticism that it shed little light on the matter of allegations of misconduct by the former Presidential Office deputy secretary-general.
Ma said the report by the Presidential Office on Chen was an administrative investigation with the aim of determining whether Chen had ordered his subordinates to engage in improper activities.
"The report is aimed at finding out whether Chen has improperly instructed his subordinates to conduct inappropriate conducts," Ma told the legislature's Organic Laws and Statutes Committee in response to the question filed by a committee member, KMT caucus whip John Wu (
According to the report, Chen went abroad on four occasions without applying for a leave of absence, and on a further two occasions failed to complete the leave application procedures.
During this period, Chen also allegedly ordered a staff member in the Presidential Office's accounting department to handle his personal financial dealings, including stock transactions.
The staffer also provided her personal account, which Chen used to purchase 180,000 shares of a company on the over-the-counter market.
The report further said that Chen made 18 overseas trips during his stints as Presidential Office deputy secretary-general between 2000 and last year and later as a national policy adviser to the president. He only applied for leave for 12 of those trips.
The six unauthorized trips took place on May 29, 2001, to Vietnam; Nov. 1, 2002, to South Korea; Feb. 27, 2003, to Indonesia; Dec. 6, 2003, to Vietnam; June 9 last year, to Vietnam; and March 17 this year to Vietnam.
Independent Legislator Chiu Yi (
Also at issue is whether the Presidential Office had prior knowledge of Chen's trips and what their purpose was.
KMT legislators Lee Ching-hua (
Ma said he knew nothing about whether or not Chen has a second passport and suggested that Chiu obtain the information from the Bureau of Immigration.
According to Presidential Office records, Chen took leave 17 times while he was deputy secretary-general and eight times while serving as the president's policy counselor, including five trips to Vietnam, two to Thailand and one to Indonesia.
Upset by Ma's attitude, Chiu said that he was helping his "master," apparently referring to President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), to "purge the black sheep in the herd."
"I don't think we need your help in this regard," Ma said.
Ma said that "wiretapping, searches, or even looking into the information of bank accounts" is the business of prosecutors and investigators.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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