The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) should be held accountable for an amendment that decriminalizes the involvement of elected officials, professors and staff at colleges and academic institutions involved in irregularities in the use of public funds, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus convener Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) said yesterday.
The public has criticized the DPP for being an “accomplice” in the passage of an amendment to the Accounting Act (會計法) in the legislature at midnight on Friday, with Ker singled out by fellow DPP lawmakers for “unilaterally offering the DPP’s endorsement without the consent of the entire caucus.”
“Everyone should understand that the amendment was submitted by the KMT because a number of high-ranking KMT officials, including Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平), were involved in misuse of public funds,” Ker told a press conference.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The amendment’s passage has been described by critics as a “midnight ambush.”
The legislation would exonerate former independent legislator and Taichung County Council speaker Yen Ching-piao (顏清標), who is serving a three-and-a-half-year prison term for misusing public funds and other councilors facing similar charges.
It would also clear about 700 university professors, including National Taiwan University Hospital physician Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who are under investigation for misusing receipts to claim government reimbursements.
Although the public has criticized all four parties that endorsed the initiative in a closed-door negotiation for Yen’s imminent release, most of the criticism has fallen on the DPP.
The DPP’s priority was to help professors and other academics, but “politics is always about making compromises,” which was why local councilors were also included in the amendment, Ker said.
Ker said he raised the issue of the decriminalizing the misuse presidential state funds, which would apply to former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) involvement in a corruption case, but the KMT lawmakers had turned down the idea.
“I don’t know why the KMT, the ruling party with a legislative majority, suddenly seems to have vanished from the public’s view and everyone is talking about holding the DPP accountable,” he added.
He denied that he made the decision to back the amendment unilaterally, saying he had discussed it with other DPP lawmakers in the caucus meeting on Friday morning and no one had voiced opposition at the time.
DPP Legislator Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟), who has been the most prominent critic of Ker’s actions on the vote, said he was not at the caucus meeting.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods