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Former education minister declines to join Ma Cabinet

Former education minister Kirby Yang (楊朝祥), a prospective candidate for education minister, said yesterday he would not join president-elect Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration following fresh allegations he was involved in a corruption scandal.

“I do not have any intention of taking up the position. I am still passionate about education, but I can dedicate my efforts by working with civil groups or teachers,” Yang said yesterday before convening an education forum for Ma in Taipei.

Yang said that the allegations, which were sent to media outlets and linked him to a scandal involving the Jin-Wen Institute of Technology and the Jin Wen Group, contributed to his decision not to join the Cabinet, even though a court had already acquitted him of the charges.

Yang served as education minister from June 1999 to May 2000. After stepping down alongside other Cabinet members following the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) defeat in the 2000 presidential election, he was indicted over the Jin Wen scandal for allegedly accepting bribes and aiding the group’s chairman in embezzling millions from the Jin-Wen Institute of Technology.

Yang was found not guilty in 2006 by the Taiwan High Court.

Ma declined to comment on the issue at the forum yesterday, saying only that he would carry out his educational platform, create a commission to examine education reform efforts and seek to narrow the education gap between city and rural areas after inauguration.

Dozens of students, teachers and education group representatives attended the forum, sharing concerns about the education system and urging Ma to review the successes and failures of the reforms, including the multiple-version textbook policy.

While Yang and a representative of the Education Reform Association, Ting Chih-ren (丁啟仁), advocated the current multiple-version textbook policy, which allows students and schools to choose their textbooks, Liu Hsian-han (劉祥漢), a student at the Affiliated High School of National Taiwan Normal University, lashed out at the policy. Liu said it put additional pressure on teachers and students as they stumbled to find the best textbook to prepare for exams.

“The education reform was still built on the framework of exams. If such a framework isn’t going to change, we students would rather read only one textbook version,” he said.

Former education minister Mao Gao-wen (毛高文) suggested that Ma should establish a “national education research institute” to develop long-term education policies and prevent them from political manipulation and change each time there is a transfer of government.

In other developments, Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) is expected to lead the Cabinet in resigning on May 14.


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