With the legislature scheduled to vote on President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) nominees for Examination Yuan and Control Yuan members this Friday, several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday expressed skepticism over the credentials of Examination Yuan president nominee Chang Chun-yen (張俊彥).
When approached for comment outside the first congressional public hearing on the lists, KMT Legislator Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) said his KMT colleagues had reservations about Chang’s nomination.
“We should reject the candidates that are undesirable,” Ting said, without specifying whether he was talking about Chang.
KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) said it would be “difficult” for her to vote for Chang given his “performance” during his visit to the legislature last Thursday.
Hung was referring to an encounter she had with Chang, a former president of National Chiao Tung University, where Hung questioned Chang’s political affiliation while Chang told her that “enemies often cross each other’s path.”
KMT Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said “those who did not demonstrate a high enough emotional quotient when talking to others” might have difficulty being approved by the legislature.
REVIEW
The legislature is expected to hold extraordinary plenary sessions between today and Thursday to review the lists before the nomination is put to a vote on Friday.
Ma surprised many by nominating Chang, who is close to former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
PAN-GREENS
He also included many pan-green figures, such as former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Shen Fu-hsiung (沈富雄) and former Taiwan Solidarity Union legislator Chien Lin Whei-jun (錢林慧君), as nominees for the Control Yuan.
The Control Yuan — the nation’s top supervisory body tasked with monitoring and arbitrating matters concerning public officials — has been left empty since Jan. 31, 2005, as a result of the KMT’s refusal to review the former president’s nominees.
DOUBTS
In addition to Chang Chun-yen, KMT Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) also doubted the appropriateness of Chien Lin as a Control Yuan member, adding that he would like to question Chien Lin, who was once a member of the former Cabinet’s Referendum Review Committee, regarding whether she still believed it was legitimate to hold referendums simultaneously with elections.
KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅) said he found the nomination of Shen, Chien Lin and Chang Chun-yen problematic.
Ting said the KMT caucus had reached a consensus to support “good candidates,” while respecting KMT legislators’ decisions regarding “controversial nominees.”
QUESTIONNAIRE
Meanwhile, the DPP legislative caucus yesterday offered a questionnaire for Control Yuan nominees.
DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) told a press conference at the legislature that the nominees would be questioned on whether or not they are loyal to the country, have any preference for any political party, have any conflict of interests that could affect their position, have dual citizenship and whether they have records supporting the protection of human rights.
She said the questionnaire would be given to the nominees, and that she hoped all of them would fill it in and return it.
DPP Legislator Wong Chin-chu (翁金珠) said Ma’s nominations for Control Yuan posts were a political trade-off.
She said nominees Chao Chang-ping (趙昌平) and Chao Jung-yao (趙榮耀), both two-time Control Yuan members, were inappropriate nominations this time around.
She also accused Ma of favoring the New Party.
Nominees Chou Yan-shan (周陽山), Yang Mei-ling (楊美玲), Lee Ping-nan (李炳南) and even the Control Yuan president-designate — former finance minister Wang Chien-shien — are all New Party members, she 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