Several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators yesterday questioned the impartiality of a legislative watchdog after the organization gave them the worst reviews among all legislators from the organization.
KMT Legislator Tsai Chin-lung (蔡錦隆), who ranked bottom among members of the Home and Nations Committee in a review by Citizen Congress Watch (CCW), expressed doubts about the evaluation criteria.
“I was voted the worst [in the committee] only because I did not sign a CCW agreement [to push sunshine bills],” he said.
PHOTO: CNA
KMT Legislator Tsao Erh-chang (曹爾忠), who was considered by the CCW to have the worst performance among Transportation Committee members, accused the organization of disregarding his explanation on several occasions that his attendance record was seriously affected by the poor weather of Matsu.
KMT Legislator Chiu Yi (邱毅), who ranked lowest among members of the Judiciary and Organic Law and Statutes Committee, said the CCW was politically biased.
“This organization is pro-green. It is trying to protect [former president] Chen [Shui-bian (陳水扁)]. Of course it dislikes me,” Chiu said when asked for comment.
Chiu later filed a defamation lawsuit against CCW chairman Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) and board member Chen Ming-li (陳明理), saying that they “failed to rationally and reasonably supervise [the legislature],” but criticized “elected representatives who do not share their political views.”
The CCW publicized its evaluation of legislators on Sunday after some 100 evaluators, including academics, journalists, representatives from non-governmental organizations, businesspeople and students assessed lawmakers in accordance with their attendance record, how often they spoke at legislative meetings or whether they had signed an agreement to improve legislative transparency.
Seven KMT legislators, including Tsai, Tsao, Chiu, Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱), Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁), Chang Chia-chun (張嘉郡) and Hsu Shao-ping (徐少萍) and Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator Lin Ping-kun (林炳坤) were considered to have been the worst performers.
None of the 27 Democratic Progressive Party legislators was ranked lower.
KMT caucus secretary-general Chang Sho-wen (張碩文) condemned the CCW, saying KMT lawmakers who received poor reviews had performed well in terms of their bills, budget reviews and service to voters in their electoral districts.
The CCW held a press conference yesterday afternoon in response to the criticism.
While apologizing to Chiu for failing to include his endorsement of the legislative transparency agreement when tallying Chiu’s score, which meant Chiu should have ranked ninth in the Judiciary and Organic Law and Statutes Committee, CCW secretary-general Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) defended the standards adopted in making the evaluation.
Ho said review criteria came from many sources, such as official statistics on the legislature’s Web site, media reports and data provided by lawmakers.
A reviewer who wished to remain anonymous rebutted Chiu’s claim that the CCW was trying to protect the former president.
“We started collecting data for the review several months ago ... before Chen [Shui-bian] was suspected of money laundering,” he said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
‘GROWING UP TOGETHER’: Jensen Huang celebrated the nation’s role in the formation of the tech firm at a Silicon Valley gathering, saying ‘Taiwan saved Nvidia’ Taiwan is in the center of the new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) told a gathering with Taiwanese on Thursday in Silicon Valley’s largest city, San Jose. Tainan-born Huang said it must be celebrated that “Taiwan is right in the middle” of a new industrial revolution in which “something new is being made, and made in a new way.” Huang recalled the manufacturing process of the RIVA 128 graphics processing unit, Nvidia’s first commercial success, describing it as the “most complicated chip at the time.” As Nvidia did not have the budget, he wrote a letter to Taiwan