Disappointed by the seventh legislature’s performance a year after its inauguration, Citizen Congress Watch (CCW) yesterday urged lawmakers to focus on their duties, be “civilized” and watch what they say.
“It’s been a year since the seventh legislature began, but instead of setting good examples for the public and focusing on work, our lawmakers often engage in misconduct that breaks the rules they themselves create,” CCW executive director Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) said, citing several incidents involving “inappropriate” remarks or behavior on the part of lawmakers.
In one incident in October, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lu Chia-chen (盧嘉辰) said a colleague needed a husband to stop her from complaining.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) had expressed anger at a government policy at a meeting of the Internal Administration Committee, to which Lu said: “The only way to make Chiu happy is to find her a husband.”
In another incident the same month, DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) slapped KMT Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) after Hung hit Kuan’s office aide.
Kuan was later sent to the Discipline Committee, which suspended her legislative authority for three months.
Also that month, KMT Legislator Huang Chao-shun (黃昭順) called Kuan “shameless” after the two got into an argument.
Earlier this month, Lu said Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) had suffered a minor stroke two years ago as punishment for the then-DPP government’s decision to change the name of Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to National Taiwan Democracy Hall. Lu said the change had offended Chiang’s ghost.
Last week, in response to news that parents with a higher level of education were less willing to have children amid the economic crisis, KMT Legislator Kuo Su-chun (郭素春) said: “Today it’s only those lower class workers with a lower education who have nothing that would have children, and their children will just grow up to become homeless people.”
“We regret that, among all these incidents of misconduct, only the case involving Kuan and Hung was sent to the Discipline Committee,” CCW chairman Ku Chung-hwa (顧忠華) said. “We expect our legislature to be civilized, driven by public interests, transparent and efficient.”
In response, Kuo and Lu both said they had not meant to offend anyone. Kuan said it was not fair that the legislature had punished her, but she said she would improve her performance.
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
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
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