The Taiwan Association of University Professors yesterday said prosecutors should apply the same standards to the investigation into Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) handling of his mayoral special allowance as as they did with that of President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
Calling this a "principle of equality," Cheng Kun-shan (鄭昆山), a member of the association and a professor of Criminology at National Chung Cheng University, told a press conference yesterday that indicting the mayor and investigating other chiefs' allowances were necessary, even though many may be found to have mishandled their allowances.
But he said following indictments courts may reject such cases because the independence of the right of government administration would be violated if the judicial system made such an indictment.
PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES
Cheng called on the judicial system to hold onto its "judicial self-restraint" and respect the right of administration, by which he meant prosecutors should not investigate "political problems" such as the "state affairs fund" or government chiefs' special allowances.
Professor of the Department of Public Administration at Tamkang University Chen Ming-siang (
Under an obscure executive order dating from the 1950s, more than 6,500 local government chiefs receive a discretionary budget, half of which can be used for public expenditure using "claim forms" to be filled out by the fund's recipient.
Ma, who was accused of pocketing money that only required "claim forms" because he wired the money to his personal account, defended himself by saying that potential problems with the way that he handled the mayoral special allowance were the result of pitfalls in the way the system was organized
"If [he] has committed a crime, he should face the consequences. Whether or not other people are guilty has nothing to do with whether he is guilty. It's as simple as that," Chen Ming-siang said.
He added that people are obliged to understand legal regulations and that Ma was no exception particularly because he is a former minister of justice.
Tax-payers would never agree to consider government chiefs' special allowances as salary in a different form nor would they consider irregularities as a result of systemic problems amnestying the accused as a result, he said.
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