Examination Yuan President John Kuan (關中) yesterday described as “backward thinking” a proposal to punish government supervisors if their subordinates violated drunk driving rules.
Punishing managers would be a violation of democracy and human rights, Kuan said after visiting a hall being used for civil service examinations.
If the Executive Yuan proceeds with the proposal, “I will complain to the Control Yuan,” Kuan said, directing the comment at Control Yuan member Wu Feng-shan (吳豐山), who accompanied Kuan on the visit.
Photo: CNA
Wu agreed, saying the practice of punishing a supervisor for a subordinate’s behavior outside the workplace was a remnant of the authoritarian era, and not appropriate for a nation that now practices constitutional government.
The idea was raised during a recent meeting convened by the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration and several other government agencies on disciplining government workers found to have driven under the influence of alcohol.
According to the personnel administration, police and the military already have measures to punish superiors if their subordinates violate laws governing drunk driving, and it said other agencies could decide whether to apply the same measures.
Taiwan implemented one of the world’s toughest drunk driving standards last month.
Under the revised Criminal Code, motorists are subject to prosecution if they are caught with a breath alcohol content of 0.25mg per liter or higher, or a blood alcohol content of 0.05 percent and above.
They can be fined for having a breath alcohol content of 0.15mg or higher.
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:
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