The legislature asked the Presidential Office yesterday to provide information on the permanent residency and dual nationality status on Control Yuan and Examination Yuan nominees for legislators’ reference before they can approve the nominees.
Legislators from across party lines reached a consensus yesterday during cross-party negotiations in the wake of recent concerns over the US green card status of several nominees.
The dispute over nominees’ permanent residency status intensified after Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) accused Examination Yuan vice presidential nominee Wu Chin-lin (伍錦霖) of having applied for a green card.
Both Examination Yuan nominees Tsai Shih-yuan (蔡式淵) and Tsai Bih-hwang (蔡璧煌) have also obtained green cards, Kuan said.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said after the negotiations yesterday that the legislators agreed that the nominees’ permanent residency and dual nationality status should serve as a key reference before deciding to approve the list.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) submitted his nomination list to the legislature yesterday afternoon. The legislature will vote on the Control Yuan nominees on July 4 and Examination Yuan nominees on July 11.
According to the Law Governing the Legislative Yuan’s Power (立法院職權行使法), the nominations require the approval of more than half of all sitting legislators.
The Control Yuan — the country’s top supervisory body, which monitors and arbitrates matters concerning elected officials and senior civil servants — has been empty since the term of office of the previous members expired on Jan. 31, 2005, following a pan-blue camp boycott of former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) nominees.
The term of the current Examination Yuan members will expire on Aug. 31. Their successors will be sworn in on Sept. 1.
Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said yesterday that Presidential Office Secretary-General Chan Chun-po (詹春柏) would lead the nominees on a visit to the legislature tomorrow as a courtesy to the lawmaking body.
Wang said the visit was organized to prevent nominees making individual visits to seek support from legislators. While Wang Jin-pyng and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus have agreed to meet the nominees, Wang Yu-chi said they were still consulting with other party caucuses.
As both governing and opposition parties reached a consensus yesterday to request that the Presidential Office determine whether any of the nominees hold a US green card or other permanent residency, Wang Yu-chi said they would conduct an investigation and send a copy of the results to the legislature.
Meanwhile, the DPP legislative caucus complained yesterday that the professional experience of the nominees had not been stated clearly enough.
“I feel humiliated and ignored. If the background of the nominees is not clarified, we will boycott the review process,” DPP legislative caucus whip William Lai (賴清德) told a news conference yesterday morning.
Lai said the Presidential Office had submitted the resumes of all the nominees to the legislature so that lawmakers could review them before they launch the approval process.
The resumes, however, were too short and too simple, Lai said.
“The resumes do not even contain their academic background or work experience,” Lai said. “It is our job to review the president’s nominees, but how are we going to do that when we do not know anything about them?”
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
US President Donald Trump said "it’s up to" Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be "very unhappy" with a change in the "status quo," the New York Times said in an interview published yesterday. Xi "considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing," Trump told the newspaper on Wednesday. "But I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that," he added. "I hope he doesn’t do that." Trump made the comments in
Tourism in Kenting fell to a historic low for the second consecutive year last year, impacting hotels and other local businesses that rely on a steady stream of domestic tourists, the latest data showed. A total of 2.139 million tourists visited Kenting last year, down slightly from 2.14 million in 2024, the data showed. The number of tourists who visited the national park on the Hengchun Peninsula peaked in 2015 at 8.37 million people. That number has been below 2.2 million for two years, although there was a spike in October last year due to multiple long weekends. The occupancy rate for hotels
A cold surge advisory was today issued for 18 cities and counties across Taiwan, with temperatures of below 10°C forecast during the day and into tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. New Taipei City, Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties are expected to experience sustained temperatures of 10°C or lower, the CWA said. Temperatures are likely to temporarily drop below 10°C in most other areas, except Taitung, Pingtung, Penghu and Lienchiang (Matsu) counties, CWA data showed. The cold weather is being caused by a strong continental cold air mass, combined with radiative cooling, a process in which heat escapes from
RSS