Control Yuan member Chou Yang-shan (周陽山) yesterday said via his assistant that he had no intention of resigning, dismissing media reports that he had indicated his intent to quit following an investigation by the Control Yuan that placed the performance of Taiwan’s former representative to Singapore Vanessa Shih (史亞平) under intense scrutiny.
Chou “will serve out his term at the Control Yuan,” Chou’s assistant said by telephone yesterday in response to a report by the Chinese-language United Daily, which said he planned to quit because of the case. Chou was unavailable for a comment.
The newspaper reported that Chou said he would quit at a meeting of the Control Yuan’s Committee on Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs last Wednesday.
It was at that meeting that a majority of Control Yuan members upheld an earlier decision that the results of an investigation led by Chou into Shih’s performance in Singapore should remain classified.
partial disclosure
Control Yuan member Lee Ping-nan (李炳南), who attended the meeting, said Chou made several attempts to push for partial disclosure of the report to counter claims of “abuse of power” on his part in handling the case. However, most Control Yuan members were of the opinion that the sensitive nature of information in the report warranted classification.
report
Chou, in conjunction with Control Yuan member Ma Yi-kung (馬以工), concluded in their report that Shih was responsible for “serious dereliction of duty” in her dealings with the Singaporean government during her term, which ran from January 2009 to late February, while former division chief Chang Shih-jui (張詩瑞) at Taipei’s Representative Office in Singapore committed a “major violation of law” by failing to cooperate with their investigation.
The United Daily News reported on Wednesday last week that the only reason Chou charged Shih with dereliction of duty was the failure of office staff to attend a centennial commemoration of the Hsinhai Revolution last year.
revenge
That led to accusations that Chou was not impartial over the investigations and some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers even accused him of launching the investigation as an act of revenge over a personal slight, after Chou reportedly did not treat him in the way he had expected during a visit to Singapore.
partial disclosure
Asked to verify the authenticity of the content disclosed in the United Daily News report, Lee said that the newspaper only had “part of the full Control Yuan report,” which is 30 to 40 pages in length.
He also said that there were clear discrepancies between the story reported in the newspaper and the content of the Control Yuan report.
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