A media report that the president had decided to allow political parties to nominate candidates for the Control Yuan in proportion to the seats each party has in the legislature evoked strong reactions from across the political spectrum yesterday.
The report in yesterday's United Evening News claimed that the new nomination process was the result of an agreement between President Chen Shui-bian (
Of the 27 nominees, the report said the Democratic Progressive Party would be able to recommend eight, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) eight, the People First Party three, the Taiwan Solidarity Union two and the Non-Partisan Solidarity Union one. Chen would reserve the right to recommend the other five, the report said.
However, Deputy Presidential Office Spokesman Cho Chun-ying (
Cho said that the letter the Presidential Office sent out to political parties on Monday did not mention anything about the number of candidates each party would be able to nominate, but had instead merely asked them to make recommendations in line with the regulations.
Cho was referring to the Organic Law of the Control Yuan (監察院組織法) and the Civil Servants Employment Law (公務人員任用法).
While the Organic Law of the Control Yuan regulates the requirements for Control Yuan members, the Civil Servants Employment Law states who can and cannot serve as a civil servant.
Cho also denied that Chen was planning to nominate former acting Kaohsiung mayor Yeh Chu-lan (
On whether the Presidential Office would allow political parties more time to make their recommendations, Cho said that the Office respected different opinions but would like political parties to comply with its wishes.
Cho refused to comment on whether a review committee would again be set up to screen candidates.
Vice President Annette Lu (
The opposition-dominated legislature has refused to confirm the nominees for more than two years. Chen began the re-nomination process on Monday, asking political parties to recommend candidates within a week.
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